Flash blindness is visual impairment during and following exposure to a light flash of extremely high intensity. It may last for a few seconds to a few minutes.
For example, in everyday life, the subject of a flash photograph can be temporarily flash blinded. The bright light overwhelms the eye and only gradually fades. A bright spot or spots may be seen for many minutes. This phenomenon is leveraged in non-lethal weapons such as flash grenades and laser dazzlers.
Read more about Flash Blindness: Cause, Temporary Vs. Permanent, Potential Hazards, Pain, Related Conditions
Famous quotes containing the words flash and/or blindness:
“The point of the dragonfly’s terrible lip, the giant water bug, birdsong, or the beautiful dazzle and flash of sunlighted minnows, is not that it all fits together like clockwork--for it doesn’t ... but that it all flows so freely wild, like the creek, that it all surges in such a free, finged tangle. Freedom is the world’s water and weather, the world’s nourishment freely given, its soil and sap: and the creator loves pizzazz.”
—Annie Dillard (b. 1945)
“... that great blindness which we are all under in respect to our own selves.”
—Molière [Jean Baptiste Poquelin] (1622–1673)