do i have the ability to see in ultraviolet?

skipper1

ever since a few years ago when my and my sister both got black lights for our rooms [ i am myopic so i have to wear glasses] i have uv protection [non darkening] idk what it is but when i had my glasses on i saw the light a dark purple and the room would be darker and when i took my glasses off i saw the light bright light blue and purple and the room was easy to see in. anybody know what this means? also i heard girls see more colors so i think im might be true ^u^

Drakkith

Skipper, I'm having a little trouble understanding you. Your grammar and sentence structure is poor. Could you please try to use a little more correct English when writing a post?

Anyways, I don't know if you see in UV, but the little I've read on it suggests it is possible. Supposedly people who have had their lens removed from their eye can sometimes see UV as white in color, meaning that it activates all 3 cones in their eye, which could explain you seeing a light blue instead of purple. However, I don't know nearly enough about optics to say for sure, so I wouldn't go around telling people you can see in UV just quite yet. It could be something else entirely that you and I don't know about.

K^2

It's entirely possible that your glasses block part of the spectrum range which is visible to you. I wouldn't call that seeing in UV, though. Everyone has effectively the same spectrum of sensitivity to light. It's just that the further the light gets into UV, the "dimmer" it appears. If you have more sensitive vision, it's possible that you still see the light that's too "dim" for someone else to see. But simply increasing brightness of the light would make it visible to the other person as well.

skipper1

uh? so i know what is English not a ********.

Drakkith

Sorry, I don't know what you are trying to say here.

Claude Bile

Skipper1, your rambling is incoherent. You have no special powers.

Claude.

m.e.t.a.

Hi skipper. I have no technical knowledge of what constitutes a "typical" UV absorption spectrum for eyeglasses, but it could be possible that, in addition to being strongly absorbent to UV, your glasses are also weakly absorbent to near-UV (i.e. deep violet). As K^2 mentioned, the eye's sensitivity tapers off towards zero as the wavelength of light decreases towards UV--that is, as the colour of light goes from blue --> violet --> deep violet/near-UV, and finally to UV, which is invisible. When wearing your glasses in normal lighting conditions, you wouldn't notice that your glasses absorb a tiny bit of deep violet because your eye is only weakly sensitive to light in that wavelength band anyway. However, under a blacklight, deep violet is the only colour of light available, and you would easily notice if your glasses were absorbing some of it. Try this is a test: under the blacklight, give someone else your glasses to wear and ask them if they observe the same darkening effect that you do.

m.e.t.a.

P.S. I apologise for the people who evidently got up on the wrong side of bed this morning.