You know when it’s blazing hot outside and objects closer to the ground appear to be wavy? Like when you’re driving down the highway and the stretch of road ahead looks like it’s melting into liquid waves? This phenomenon is called refraction, or in layman’s terms – “highway mirage.” According to WiseGeek.com, this happens when light passes between substances with different refractive indices — in this case, cool air and hot air.

Well, sometimes when I’ve been looking at my computer screen for too long, the same wavy illusion plagues the words and letters on my screen. The “computer mirage” isn’t caused by contrasting refractive indices (that I know of), but is more likely due to small fonts and lots of staring and glaring.

When this distortion happens, I usually close my eyes for about 20 seconds and then try to continue working. Although my contacts may play a role (sometimes they get a little cloudy), I’m willing to bet it’s caused by a combination of Internet and document font sizes and the amount of time I spend on the computer. It’s almost like I’ve been reading a newspaper for 7-8 hours a day, only the text is on a computer screen instead of paper. That’s a lot of eye strain! No wonder why words go wavy on me.

To help reduce eye strain (before permanent damage occurs) I’m considering a monitor magnifier. When I was a trainer (my former job), I noticed a few people using these during class training. I didn’t think much about it then, but I’m starting to believe a monitor magnifier might be a good solution to “computer mirage” and daily eye fatigue. If you’re experiencing this kind of text distortion, or just want to magnify words and images so you can see them better, check out this week’s Next Day Favorite: the Kantek LCD Monitor Magnifier. It’s adjustable magnification more than doubles character size. And its high quality Fresnel lens is coated with anti-glare. With the addition of a massage chair, it’s just what I need to make work less straining (and more comfortable).