Seeing The Vessels Of The Retina Essay, Research Paper

Seeing the Vessels of the Retina

Have you ever seen a doctor look into a patient’s eye with an instrument

called an “ophthalmoscope”? The instrument lights up the inside of the eye and

magnifies the vessels of the retina in the rear of the eye.

This gives the doctor an idea about how healthy you are as he looks at

all the vessels in the back of your eye.

HYPOTHESIS

I wanted to know if a person could see the blood vessels in the back of

their own eye without using the instrument that the doctor uses in the eye exam.

I am really interested in eyes because I have an uncle who got in a car

accident and now he is blind. I hope someday doctors can help all those who

are blind to be able to see.

I guessed that a person could not see the blood vessels in the back of

their own eyes.

EXPERIMENT

My experiment was not about the tiny blood vessels that you can easily

see on the surface of the eye. It’s to do with the larger vessels

All I had to do was take a person into a dark room with my flashlight.

I had them cover their left eye and look down at the floor with their right eye.

I held the flashlight up towards the ceiling under their right eye, but they

kept looking at the floor, not the light.

RESULTS

I am writing down what everyone recorded for me. I am first:

JOSH: I could see black blood vessels with orange in the background…it looked

like a lot of dead tree.

BRENDA: The blood vessels resembled jagged lighting bolts or trees in the winter

time.

LAURA: I saw crooked lines that didn’t stand still, but kept changing.

DARWIN: The image appeared to be in front of the body and quite enlarged. I

found that it takes practice to see this.

BRYAN: Sometimes your eye gets tired before you can successfully do this, so you

may have to use the other eye or take a rest and try it again.

MATT: I saw black lines that branched out and kept moving. I also saw orange

and red colors along with the black lines.

JOSH (second time): Sometimes if you suddenly change the direction of your eyes

from left to right, you will see very bright blood vessels for just a second.

CONCLUSION:

I found out that you can see the vessels in the back of the eye without

using the doctor’s instrument.

I was glad to know that this is possible.