Diving Mask

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Your diving mask fits over your eyes and creates a small pocket of air between them and the surrounding water. This keeps the water pressure outside from damaging your sensitive eyes. But this is just a small part of what a diving mask actually does. Modern diving masks are actually designed to help you see better under water than you otherwise would.

If you’ve ever opened your eyes under water without a diving mask you’re familiar with the otherworldly appearance that everything takes on. Everything ripples, head movements cause wild distortions in the landscape, and everything either seems much to close, or distant beyond belief. This is because water will distort light. It does a much better job at distorting it than air does.

Take for example the way things seen in the distance slowly fade to blue. This is due to the refraction of light by the high volume of air between you and the object. Water has the same effect, only it is much denser than air, making it much better at the distortion. A diving mask actually contains anywhere from two to four lenses built into the mask to help counter this distortion. It can give you somewhat of a fish eyed view of the world when you use it out of the water, but once below it becomes necessary to give a realistic picture of the world around you.

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