[OT] Pendulum
Darius Clarke
darius
Mon May 5 08:53:39 PDT 2003
Here is a great optical illusion one can easily perform with a pendulum.
Watch the (real world) pendulum swinging while sitting perpendicular to its
motion (as you would normally watch a pendulum) while you and the pendulum are
in a brightly lit room.
Cover one eye with a dark sunglass lens. The pendulum will appear to swing in an
oval. Cover the other eye with the sunglass lens. The pendulum will appear to
swing in an oval in the opposite direction.
The illusion appears to indicate that our vision system uses a timing delta of a
moving object as seen from one eye and another to help it as part of several
visual clues to determine 3D distance from the viewer. Couple this with the fact
that our vision system processes information faster under bright lighting and
slower under dim lighting. The eye with the sunglass lens reports the motion
delayed and so the brain calculates a different distance as the pendulum moves
at different speeds.
Cheers,
Darius
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