A piece of glass or plastic that has been ground into a convex shape so that light which goes through it bends, and the things on the other side of the lens look bigger.

Kind of a surreal object... it's very familiar and nostalgiac, because all the mystery books I used to read as a kid had pictures of guys with magnifying glasses on the front, and a magnifying glass is the symbol for detectives in general. I had one as a kid, and of course my friends and I went through the stage where we tried lighting various things on fire with it. But I can't recall having seen one since the end of elementary school, because they're not useful for a whole lot until you're older and your vision starts to go. I just found one in this drawer right here, and it baffles me, because I haven't seen one in about a decade. I can't think of many other things that have that property. Plus, the name is weird too: magnifying glass? Shouldn't that be something more like concave lens?

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