It seems unlikely that there’s anyone in the world who looks cooler without sunglasses. Miles from their original purpose, sunglasses are used nowadays for fashion—even at night in the absence of any sunlight. But protecting your eyes from the rage of the sun and making you look cooler are uses of sunglasses you’re already familiar with. Here are 3 things sunglasses do for you that you probably didn’t know about.
Sunglasses Reduce Glare using Polarization
Light is a wave, and like any wave, light has a direction of motion. Light rays can vibrate up and down, left and right, or anything in between. This property is called polarization of light. A polarizer such as polarized glasses only allows light waves vibrating in a particular direction to pass while blocking the rest.
Light from most light sources is said to be “unpolarized.” This is because a beam of light has many light rays with different polarizations, which all cancel each other out.
However, glares are different. When light reflects off of a surface such as the roof of a car, it gets polarized in the direction of the surface. The light from glares is partially polarized in the horizontal direction and hence, can be blocked.
Polarized sunglasses by American Bonfire do exactly this. These sunglasses have a polarizer that only allows light with vertical (up and down) polarization while blocking horizontally polarized light from glares. This dims the glares and allows you even better visibility against glare than your own eyes.
Sunglasses Make you Look More Confident
Humans are a social species, and we communicate with our bodies as much as we do with what we say. People can subconsciously tell a lot about how you’re feeling—whether you’re nervous, bored preoccupied, or stressed—just from the movement of your eyes. Wearing sunglasses hides that information, and people subconsciously assume you to be mysterious, sophisticated, and more confident.
Sunglasses Reduce High-Frequency Visible Light
Sunglasses block harmful UV rays from the sun that threaten to damage your DNA and cause premature aging—a lot of people know this. What’s less commonly known is the impact of high-frequency visible light.
Visible light has historically been considered safe—and it mostly is—except that the high-frequency indigo and violet light from the sun causes hyperpigmentation. It tells the skin under your eyes to produce more pigment, which makes your under-eyes darker and makes you look tired. Sunglasses reduce this high-frequency light which keeps you looking healthy and fresh. American Bonfire sunglasses block almost 100 percent of UV rays and reduce high-frequency blue light, protecting your eyes from dark circles and premature aging.
