a remarkable thing, the tear
April 26, 2006When my younger son was teething, his slightly older brother and I had to deal with more tears than usual. At some point, we came up with the Tear Cup, actually a plastic dose measure that came with cough medicine.
It was magic. By holding the cup to the corner of an eye, the crying would stop. (This failed to work in the middle of the night, however.)
Now we learn that tears are much more than a simple fluid that flows from the eyes. The film covering our eyes is made of molecules in a somewhat orderly arrangement, with crystal-like patterns mixed in.
