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How does the lens of the eye change with age?
The lens loses its clarity as well as its focusing power. The lens
of the eye is as clear as water when we’re young. It’s also very
flexible and is able to accommodate a great amount. This is
why elementary school kids can literally read a book that is two
inches in front of their eyes. Every year the lens becomes
slightly cloudier (like adding a drop of muddy water to a glass
of water) and the lens becomes less elastic and some of its
near focusing ability is lost. After age 40, as we progressively
lose the near focusing ability due to presbyopia, we tend to
hold things further away in order to read them.
Other more complex changes happen as well as the human lens hardens and ages, such as an increase in spherical aberration and other distortions, with a resultant decrease in the image quality. This helps to explain why it's a pleasure to drive at night in your 20s, and much more difficult later in life.
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