How to Engage Students with the Hands-On Rubin’s Eye Vision Lab (Video Demo)

Give your students the opportunity to receive a clear understanding of human vision with the Rubin’s Eye Model and Vision Lab. This hands-on model allows students to explore the human eye and how it enables us to see the world around with clarity and detail.

Students can manipulate the model with various options to further their understanding of vision and visual disorders. The Rubin’s Eye Model demonstrates how crisp inverted images are projected on the retina. From there, students can discover how the internal lens of the eye accommodates and brings items into sharp focus.

The Rubin’s Eye Model can also be used to learn more about visual disorders. Students need to change the model in order to replicate each eye disorder and see the impact immediately. A step-by-step illustrated instructional guide is included to explain experiments and additional suggested activities.

What kind of activities can be used for the Rubin’s Eye Vision Lab?

Detect visual disorders. By adjusting the model with our provided directions, students can reproduce four visual disorders. They can diagnose each visual disorder and use the vision lab’s materials to correct it. The following visual disorders can be reproduced:

• Myopia (nearsightedness)
• Hyperopia (farsightedness)
• Presbyopia (age-related near-vision failure to accommodate)
• Astigmatism (blurred or distorted vision at any distance due to irregular corneal curvature)

Change the focal length of the lens. In this focusing process called accommodation, the Rubin’s Eye Vision Lab is simple to use. Squeeze the trigger under the iris and it changes the distance between the projection lens on the iris, the image slide, and the retina illustration. The image slide is used to help focus the lenses and when focused, it will read, “Things are easier to see when they are in focus.” 

Add and remove the corrective lenses. A set of five interchangeable color-coded corneal lenses made of impact-resistant optical plastic can be used to teach students on how to correct vision. The five lenses set include:

• Plano lens (clear)
• Concave lens (pink)
• Convex lens (gray)
• Two astigmatic (toric) lenses (yellow)

How would you use this Rubin’s Eye Vision Lab in your classroom? Share your ideas in the comments below. Learn more about the product details and how to buy it here.