What is attention? Seems like a simply question doesn’t it? However, no one can seem to give us a definitive answer. It is an arbitrary concept that our brain has seemed to master in order to take in information from our world. Most people think that they can attend to the whole environment around them and that they have a very vivid understanding of the world. Unfortunately for us, this is not true. Our attention is limited to only things that fall in the range of the fovea. Everything else is based on assumptions made by the brain. The reason we believe we can attend to everything is based on our ability to switch our attention from one thing to the next. We had several in class examples to show this. There were the videos where entire buildings were changed slowly but no one noticed until we looked at the original image. There were the gifs of pictures where one element changed. Even after watching the change right in front of us for 5 mins, it still had to be announced before everyone let out an audible “ooohhh!” It is both amazing and a little scary to think that we can miss things that are blatantly taking place right in front of us. It can make one wonder what else are we missing in our everyday life?

For the common person, perception is just something that comes natural. They never question what it is or how it works. But honestly, why should they? However, once you acquire the knowledge it’s hard to not see how it all works in day to day activities. For example, I went down to Georgia for spring break this year. We spent some time in Atlanta and then a few days on the beach in Savannah. We spent almost every night out on the beach and so we were able to watch the moon rise every night. But how can we see the moon? It doesn’t emit any light on its own so it must be coming from somewhere. That’s where light reflection comes in. The moon is covered with a very reflective kind of dirt. This means that any light that hits it won’t be absorbed into the dirt itself but reflected into the vastness of space. (Universe Today) Some of it however is reflected straight at the earth. The rest is just scattered in deep space. Our eyes can pick up on what little light makes it to our planet and this is how we can see the moon.

Sometimes the moon rises at the same time that the sun is setting. This actually makes for a very beautiful sight. Along with the direct light from the sun lighting up the foreground, we can also see the light that is reflected straight off the moon. This is fine when both the sun and moon are visible and can shine light straight at you. But why is the night still bright for about half an hour after the sun has disappeared over the horizon? This is due to the earth’s atmosphere. (Earthsky) It can “trap” the light and keep it from bouncing off the face of the planet and into space. The particles and atoms in the air will actually bounce light back and forth between them until the light energy is dissipated or absorbed by something else. This is referred to as scattered light. It makes for very beautiful sights. (see attached picture) Even though the sun is behind me in the photo, it still looks as if it were setting in front of me. The reason that the sky isn’t just blue all the way down to the sea is because all of the blue light (which has a different wave length than other colors) is absorbed by those random particles in the air. The red and orange energies are still left bouncing around several miles away from where we were standing.

Works Cited

“Enjoying EarthSky? Subscribe.” EarthSky. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Mar. 2014.

“Why Does the Moon Shine?” Universe Today RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Mar. 2014.