Final answer:
The false statement about the human eye is that rods detect color and cones detect shades of gray; in reality, cones enable color vision whereas rods facilitate vision in low light without distinguishing colors.
Step-by-step explanation:
The statement which is false about the human eye is: Rods detect color, while cones detect only shades of gray. In fact, the opposite is true: cones are the photoreceptors in the human eye responsible for color vision and operate best under high light conditions, while rods are more sensitive to light and are involved in vision under low light conditions but do not convey color information.
The iris indeed adjusts the amount of light entering the eye by changing the size of the pupil, and the cornea serves as the protective, transparent front layer of the eye. Additionally, visual adaptation allows our eyes to adjust to a wide range of lighting conditions, enables contrast detection, and involves signal processing in the retina before information is sent to the brain. This adaptation can extend over five orders of magnitude of light intensity and is supported by the presence of specialized molecules such as transducin and arrestin that modulate the phototransduction process.