Here's something you can try at home: how to make your eye feels like it's closed, when it's actually open. Dave Munger of Cognitive Daily explains:
This morning I went into the darkest room in our house (the kids' bathroom), closed the door, and turned off the lights for 5 minutes. There was enough light coming in through the crack in the door that after a minute or two I could begin to make out shapes in the room: A towel rack, the shower curtain. My eyes had adapted to the dark condition. Then I closed my right eye and covered it with my hand. I turned the lights back on, for a minute, until my left eye had adapted to the light. Then I turned the lights off.
I could still see the towel rack and shower curtain with my right eye, which remained adapted to darkness. But my left eye could see nothing. In fact, my left eye felt as if it was closed. I made every effort to open the eye, but it seemed that some unstoppable force was keeping it closed. The only way to make my eye feel as if it was open was to cover it with my hand. I still couldn't see anything with the eye, but at least I could convince myself it was open.
Link - via Miss Cellania
Previously on Neatorama: 10 Things That Are (Almost) Impossible To do With Your Body
I have the opposite feeling when I'm entering a hypnocogic state (between sleeping and wakefulness). My eyes are closed but my mind thinks they are still looking around the room!
nonetheless the eye patch seems to work for that cause. :)
However, I hear where you're coming from, definitelyme. The house I live in now seems quite luxurious to me. I grew up in rental houses, and there was always just one bathroom shared between four people. We didn't even have a kitchen table big enough for the whole family to eat at.
oohh also when i used to work in the darkroom and one eye would be looking through the grain focuser staring at light. the other closed.
Try covering up an eye and see what happens when you uncover it in 5 minutes.
When I was a kid, we'd turn off all the lights and wait for our eyes to adjust. Then you set of a flash bulb. The entire room appears as an afterimage with perfect detail. Very neat.
The mechanism behind this effect is likely to be more than just pupil dilation.
It's probably more about the rod and cone receptors in operation at the back of your retina. Once the effect is happening, the eye that had been covered will have adjusted to receiving input predominantly from your rods (which are more sensitive to light and shape but not to colour), this helps us see better in the dark. And the eye that was exposed to the light would be receiving input mostly from your cones (which are less sensitive to light and more sensitive to colour). Because cones are less sensitive to light, they don't allow us to see in the dark as easily.
Usually, we use both types of receptors, but as the light in our eyes increases, we begin to rely more on our cones, and as it decreases, we rely more on our rods.