Does eyeblack (you know.. the black goo under football and baseball players eyes) actually cut down the glare from their cheeks?

Talk About It Here!

MythMod

Okay, so the result was that eyeblack is useful against reflected light. I get that. You should also study the difference of ability to reflect light based on distance from the eye. The reason I say this is that biologists say that some animals have their own form of eyeblack (the cheetah, lions). Except their eyeblack is more like eyeliner, not a macho look by any stretch of the imagination. So why do we use our eyeblack a good half-inch from the bottom of our eye. Is it merely because of looks or is that space of blank skin essential for providing optimal light reflection.

What about in football? Does the eyeblock work with only the helmet shading the eyes.

Semi Big problem with the test. Eyeblack is primarily used to cut glare when sweat rolls down your face. The sweat droplets create alot of glare into the eyes. The eyeblack cuts that glare down considerably. Next time your out in the hot sun and start to sweat, notice how much more you tend to squint. Adam and Jamie werent sweating, so they wouldnt really notice a whole lot of difference.

quote:

Is it merely because of looks or is that space of blank skin essential for providing optimal light reflection.

As a matter of fact it is. The human eye, unlike most animals, cannot actually see the bottom of our eyes, instead we see the highest most point of our cheek bones, but its not som much the darkening of the area so much as the covering it ... preventing the ability to sweat in that area will stop the glare no matter how so it is done (unless you use a clear agent) because the glare is caused by liqued reflections ... the darker colour probably helps too though ... humans are a bit shiney.

what you have to think about is when you are playing you have swaet on your cheaks and that swaet on our cheaks can magnaify the glare and possibly turn the glare tward you eyes

the new caps by New Era Cap (professional baseball's official cap provider) have a black fabric under the bill, as opposed to the grey/white that Jaime's cap had. this improvement which is just being implemented in this year's hats will also help to greatly reduce glare.

I finally have something useful to post! lol
Ok - First the purpose of the "black" under the eye is the redue the glare (which can be exasperated by sweat) at the top pf the cheeks, right undersneath the eye. If hold your head strightforward and look directly down, you can actually see (at least most pple can...) the flesh that is directly beneth your eye socket and a little outward to the sides (where you also apply the charcoal or black)

In any athletic competition, you're head/body will be pivoted in different direction and the eyes darting around..any glare no matter how minute can interfere with vision and also be distracting.

The purpose of the charcoal black is much less, if at all, to assist in seeing anything directly in front of your face more clearly, but to reduce glare when your eyes are darting around quickly looking for things swiftly happening around you, like a small ball coming your way or a large human barreling at you.

I would think that the proper way to perform a test here would be to shine some sort of light from the drection beneath ones chin at an angle where the skin beneath the eye will would dircet that light right into ones eyeball, which changes angels (just a few degrees while still maintaining focus into the eyeball...not unlike what might happen when looking towards staduim lights) and
then perfoming some sort of test which can calculate ones ability to respond to other fast moving objects, would be ideal, if not too complicated. Either way, the way this "myth" was tested, it never acyually implemented, challenged or tested the true purpose of the eye/black.
This is even truer in the sense that we don't know the refelctive'absortion properties of thier "placebo" pink eye makeup.
Also, if performed properly, there is no way that I can think of to really implement a placebo, because unless ones looking up in ones eyesockets as much as possible, one can still see the "cheek/lower eyesocket" skin in ones peripheral vision and be able to tell if it's black or not (at least I can) although I guess this issue could be solved usuing another black substance with refelctive properties near equal to sweating skin...

I hope I've explained this as simply and straightforward as possible...

I love the MythBustes (one of my fave shows!) but when you look at in in the context I've just explained it...if it is just blocking the reflection glare from the sweaty skin under your eyesocket...(especially useful when your eye must look downward but not your whole head...like running full speed down a football field and needing to QUICKLY glance downward to see what yard line you've just crossed or a low or ground ball headed your way)....wouldn't you guys agree that it's use and practicality (assuming it blocks the skin glare which is very logical and you can try yourself in your home using charcaol)...is pretty self eveident?

PS I know harken did a great job answering the main point of the issue...hope the few more details I threw in are useful to folks...

I loved the idea of checking on the validity of using eyeblack, and since the verdict was "plausible," I guess it may seem silly to find any fault here. Buuuut...

There was one test they really should have done. Someone should have hit them some fly balls so they would have to catch them with the sun in their eyes. I had eyeblack slapped on me in two sports: baseball and football. In baseball, the coach would tell them to "black me" when the sun was glaring right down into left field (my position), and in football I mostly only had it applied when I was returning kickoffs and punts on a sunny day. When you have to fight the sun to make a clean catch, that stuff really comes in handy. I had never considered the underside of the hat's bill as part of that process until last night. I found that very interesting, and when I thought about it I realized it was more effective in baseball than in football, probably because the helmet offers no such help.

Someone mentioned sweat as a factor. I don't know if it is or if it isn't, but I do know I was usually squinting to keep beads of stinging sweat out of my eyes. I'd be curious to see the team look at that possibility, though.

And be honest... Wouldn't it be fun to watch Adam and Jamie trying to shag fly balls and punts?

The last test with the baseball cap was not convincing, because the set up looked too easily perturbed by shifting of the dummy, the cap, the main lamp, other light sources in the room, people walking around...
lux meters are very sensitive to all that, and aren't the most repeatable instruments.
There were too few trials (at least it appeared that way on TV) the dummy and cap were mounted too flimsily.

I can imagine it working though, because light coming off the skin bounces onto the underside of the cap shade, and from there into the eyes.
Without a cap, the eyes do not have line-of-sight to any surface that has line-of-sight to the eye black area. This might vary with face shape though. May be most useful for people with very deep set eyes, with cheeks that protrude under the eyes.

The cap they used had a cap shade with a light-colored under-surface.
I guess this would give the strongest benefit to eye-black.
But then the caps should simply have dark colored cap-shade-undersides, always, for minimum glare.

Wait a sec...

I have a direct line of sight to the flesh under my eyesockets/inner cheeks and I can also clearly see them in my peripheral vision, even when my eyes are "pointed' straight ahead...

I don't have a "fleshy" face, or particulary deep set eyes (I don't think anyway...) though maybe better than average peripheral vision???

I can still CLEARLY see the part of my face where the charcoal goes/would go, prety much no matter what direction my eyes are pointed in.....ESPECIALLY when my eyes are aimed downwards...

I honestly couldn't understand at all how this myth could be labeled anything other than "confirmed" but if that surface of skin isn't as direclt visible to some people as others (like me), that makes more sense...
It would seem that the "black" would benefit people who CAN see thier cheeks/under eye-sockets (whether due to deep set eyes, pereipheral vision is anotehr matter)...MUCH more then the black would benfit people who can't see it so directly...

personally, I thought this myth was tested rather rushed.

Adding the hat was rather interesting though. I'm glad they finally thought about it. I was telling them throughout the whole light test--um...a hat might help...

I was always brought up to wear eye-black to catch the dust that makes it close to the eye. Glare was NEVER an issue

thanx

So we know that eye BLACK works, but what about other darks shades, like navy blue and violet. Could they also cut down on glare. Iknow black would be the best, I just want to know what the other parts of the color-wheel do for glare.

If putting on makeup produced a significant improvement in performance then I would expect it to be used universally. Outside US sports the only person I know of who wears such makeup is the West Indian cricketer Shivnarine Chanderpaul who appears to have some kind of logo on his cheeks. Many cricketers wear white sunblock on their cheeks and don't appear to have any problems. Maybe Americans are just particularly shiny.

Just throwing in with those who've already noted it - a large part of the benefit of eyeblack is realized when sweating.

My problem with this one is that baseball players dont usually wear eye black under their eyes. Its usually football players that do.

I think the eyeblack is supposed to stop glare from a sweaty cheak. Athletes are generally sweaty people, and I think that is when the eyeblack makes the most difference. I think it would be similar to glare off of water or snow. the eyeblack is a flat black which stops the sweat from reflecting light.

I still think they should test eye-liner around the eyes to see if there is any benefit in sunlight, no matter how minimal