EYE – Second timers – V1

THE LIVING CORNEA: If you were to take a journey through an eyeball, what is the first thing you would run into?  It is clear and what you can touch with your finger.

THE LIVING CORNEA:  A memory trick to remember that the outside of your eye is the cornea is to think of eating cob of corn and accidentally bopping yourself in the eye with it.It would hit your cornea. Corn=corn+ea.

CORNEA STRENGTH: The clear cornea clear is actually very thin, just a little under 1mm thick. (550 microns) That’s the same width as 5 pieces of paper.

CORNEA STRENGTH:  The cornea is amazingly strong for its thin-ness. The strength of the cornea comes from a protein called cellulose.

CORNEA STRENGTH:  You would have to stack over 1 million molecules of collagen to get a mound of collagen one inch high.

CORNEA STRENGTH: Millions and millions of these super-strong collagen proteins add protection by running parallel like train tracks through the cells of the cornea. 

CORNEA STRENGTH:  Although collagen proteins are so strong, They are not transparent. If the cornea was only made up of just collagen fibers, even a bullet couldn’t pop our eye.

CORNEA STRENGTH:  There are precise spaces in between the collagen fibers that allow in light. These spaces are just about 200 microns wide!

CORNEA STRENGTH: If these millions of spaces between the collagen strands in your cornea were slightly thinner, they wouldn’t allow light to go through and you would be blind! 

CORNEA STRENGTH:  The cornea is opaque.