[OT] Pendulum

[Alan Kay]

Try this with television and see what happens ...

Cheers,

Alan

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At 4:18 PM -0700 4/16/03, Darius Clarke wrote:
>Here is a great optical illusion one can easily perform with a pendulum.
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>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.
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>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.
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>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.
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>Cheers,
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>
>Darius


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