IR: A Dry and Wet Soft Contact Lens

Contact Lens in front of  Hand

What do you do when your disposable contact lens is bugging you because you haven't changed it for well over a month? Throw one in the garbage and the other on a table to dry out over a day. What do you do with the contact lens if you have a not so common camera around that records things in a wavelength you're not accustomed to seeing? This.

Video
Dry and Wet Contact Lens

This is one contact lens that was left out to dry for over a day. I think it was longer but I can't remember exactly how much longer so low-balled it. Anyway, plastic soft contact lens -- a toric lens for astigmatism if one is really curious. For some reason, I was expecting it to be brittle after drying out because that was what I remembered the last one feeling like -- these things happen? Nope, this one was still flopping around, bending, and keeping its shape pretty well despite being air dried. Even more surprising was that the thing seemed to behave pretty normally even after being rehydrated. No way I'd have put it back in my eye though.

Reminder: Temperatures are not accurate.


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