Truck wheel reverse illusion: original 6deg pattern

This hexnuts-disk illustrates my original idea, where each nut on the truck wheel is first aligned radially, then each nut in sequence is positioned rotated backwards by 6 degrees. The flashing facets of the nuts create a VERY obvious reverse-rotation illusion. Also, whereas the first version had a slow bright blinking which caused distraction, this one looks constant, since it flickers twice as fast as previously. First version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78Mc9kg2kU8 Also see "blog" at http://amasci.com/news.html

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• truck
• wheel
• nuts
• optics
• physics
• rotating
• illusion
• optical
• amasci

[littlemanjoe333]

Hahaha He said 'Nut' in the first 4 seconds! :DD

[wbeaty]

@littlemanjoe333 HEX nuts! Don't mess with hexnuts or you'll end up cursed. Saps all your mojo.

[TheAtheistKat]

Alex from the ClockWork Orange?

[wbeaty]

Daughter in high school, she was temporarily a huge fan of munching away at eggiwegs, and lomticks of toast and lovely steakiwegs, while givin ya one in the yarbles, if ya have any yarbles.

[Sedokun]

Sorry for being "stupid" sometimes. It's hard to describe thoughts in 500 chars on foreign language. =P

Seems, like I saw description of purpose of this "research unit"...or it's just personal intention?

[wbeaty]

Personal projects, see "Science Hobbyist," amasci com

While driving on the highway, I fortunately observed the "reverse wheel effect" in direct sunlight. The hex-nuts on a large truck wheel contained a pattern which rotates backwards. The cause was obvious: flashing of the flat facets of the nuts.

But why would a truck driver bother to align the wheel nuts so carefully?

Experiment shows that it occurs accidentally when changing a flat tire, whenever all nuts are tightened to similar angle.

[Jones1740]

You're a real nerd and I love it.

[sciencoking]

"There´s some very obvious rotation stuff going on!"

Awesome description!

[littlemanjoe333]

@wbeaty haha :D Just kiddin man! But on a more Positive note, I love watching your vidios! :D Very Cool!

[AdminOnDuty]

Also,

If you use a strobe on this wheel you have so that the rotation is frozen, I think the nuts will appear to tighten up in place =)

Have you ever heard of US persons seeing an annoying flicker on the UK 50Hz TV systems and vice versa? Or perhaps experienced it on variable frequency monitors running at a frequency slightly different than what we are accustomed to?

I think the visual processing timing of our eye-brain is a learned timing. I think it adjusts automatically to our surrounding

[AdminOnDuty]

Hi - big fan of you work!

I've been looking around and I see there is some confusion regarding the reverse wheel effect (or wagon wheel effect). What seems to missing in most cases is that our eye-brain visual processing has a sample rate of around 15Hz and functions as a difference processor. Therefore, if the rotation (any rotation with definition) is slightly slower (or a multiple resulting in less than 360°) than that, it will appear to move backwards even in constant illumination

Cheers!

[DeathSlayer2]

@kamikim1

look at the wheel (CD?) then at the nuts, they appear to be going in opposite directions.

[kamikim1]

what was tht about

[TheAtheistKat]

mmm... eggiwegs I would like to.... ¡¡SMASH THEM!! xD