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EXPLAINING AN ILLUSIONRakesh Mohan Hallen
“Seeing is believing” is an old proverb. After all what can you believe in, if you can’t believe even what you yourself have seen? Nevertheless, we often encounter situations when we really can’t believe what our eyes see. For example, a largenumber of people often seek an explanation regarding perception of rotating wheelsand fans rotation. Some are curious to know why do the blades of a table-fan kept ina room lit with a tube-light, some times appear to be rotating in counter-clockwisedirection while others have observed that sometimes all of a sudden the blades appear rotating very slowly. Still many others have sought an explanation to the observationthat often in a movie or a television program the wheels of a vehicle; cart,
Tonga
or acar are seen moving in a direction opposite to the logically expected direction, that isclockwise for a vehicle moving from left to right.Obviously, these are not very recent phenomena. People have been perplexedwith such observation ever since the invention of cinema/TV or tube-light. However,most often we tend to ignore such innocuous observations. But if you have developedscientific temper you would like to know how these observations can be explained.Scientists usually refer to such phenomena as the Wagon Wheel Effect or Stroboscopic effect. Let me try to understand the explanation usually accepted for these illusions.If you examine a film strip closely or view a video tape in slow motion, youcan easily find out that the perceived motion on a cinema/TV screen is a result of  projecting only a small segment of infinite array of images an event is actually madeup of. Thus in cinema (or TV) the perception of motion is produced by projection of asequence of about 24 images in a second which differ from each other only in the position of a particular object. We perceive this projection as a moving object becauseof a queer characteristic of our visual sensory system. If we perceive an imagemomentarily (say for a fraction of a second) and then the image is removed from our view, as well as no other image is presented in front of our eyes, then we continue to perceive the image for a fraction of second more. This phenomenon is known as persistence of vision and is responsible for our perceiving a projection of 24 closelyrelated images in quick succession (within a second) as a continuous event withoutgetting aware of the breaks in between.Let us now analyze the above phenomena. Suppose we record with amovie/TV camera the rotary motion of a circular disc marked with only one radialline. What will be the result, if the disc rotates at a speed of 24 revolutions per second? Since the camera records an image after every 1/24
th
of a second, all theimages it will record will have the radial mark in the same position and when we seethe projection of this recording, the wheel will appear stationary. Now, consider another situation: the wheel completes one revolution in say 1/25
th
of a second. Whatwill a movie/TV recording yield in this case? Now, every time the camera registers animage the radial mark will be in a position slightly ahead of the preceding frame. Thuswhen this movie/video is projected, the projection will give a visual impression of adisc revolving the right direction. On the other hand, when the disc complete onerevolution in slightly longer than 1/24
th
of a second (say 1/23 second) the movierecording will yield a sequence of images whose projection will yield a visualimpression of a disc moving in the direction opposite to the actual direction of rotation of the disc in the recorded scene. This is so because successive recordedframes will have the radial mark in the slightly receded position as illustrated in thediagram.The perception of direction of rotation of a wheel with a number of identical
 
spokes (or marks) has an additional dimension. To perceive the direction of motionfrom a limited number of images (frames) the brain interpolates for the intermediate positions of the object or its parts. When there is only a single mark, as illustratedabove case, the successive positions of the mark can be unambiguously interpreted for the direction of rotation. However, if the wheel has more than two identical marks (or spokes), as is the case with vehicle wheels, another factor has to be taken intoaccount. Thus, if a wheel has ten spokes, a rotation of 10 degrees brings the wheelinto an identical (and indistinguishable) position. But, if in the successive frames of amovie/TV recording, the wheel rotates by an angle of 8 degrees, the visual perceptionsystem has to decide whether to perceive the motion (in the actual direction) by perceiving that each spoke moves by 8 degrees in successive frames or in the backward direction by interpreting the positions of subsequent (identical) spokes. Therotary motion in the above case is perceived to be in the opposite direction. This is so because the visual impression conveyed by a particular sequence of frames of a movieis determined by the ‘principle of proximity’. Our visual perception system perceivesmotion in such cases by assuming least possible displacement in subsequent images.Consider now the case of movie/TV recording a scene, in which a vehicle ismoving at a speed of say 36 km/h, that is, 10 m/s. At this speed if the circumferenceof the wheel is 2m the wheel of the vehicle makes 5 revolutions per second. If thewheel has 10 spokes placed symmetrically the frequency at which identicalconfigurations of the wheel appear is 50 times per second. What will be the nature of images that will be recorded by the camera in this case? In one twenty forth (1/24) of a second, any particular spoke would have moved into a position slightly ahead of thenext-to-next spoke. The wheel will therefore appear to move rather slowly in the rightdirection. If the speed of the wheel is exactly 4.8 rps it will appear totally stationary asit will whenever the speed: revolutions per second, is an exact multiple of 2.4.However if the speed is around 3.5 (or a multiple thereof) the wheel will appear to berotating in the reverse direction.” At intermediate speeds, the wheel may indeedappear moving at a very low speed, as one can easily see in a particular TVadvertisement of MRF tyres.To explain the observations related to illusions in light emitted from a tube-light one has to know that a fluorescent lamp (a tube-light) is not a steady source of light energy it appears to be. It flickers with a frequency about 100 Hertz -- doublethe frequency of the AC electric supply ( 50 Hz in India). This is so because light in afluorescent tube is produced due to alternate electric discharge from its two coilslocated at its ends. Thus light from a fluorescent lamp is not really steady, it isflickering with a frequency of about 100 Hz. Which means that our eyes reallyregister only 100 images in a second, rest of the scene does not reach our brain because there are momentary instants when there is no light which can strike theretina of our eyes. A table-fan normally has four blades. Its frequency, that is, thenumber of times it has exactly indistinguishable configuration is therefore four timesthe number of revolutions it completes in a second. The maximum speed of a commontable fan is around 1600 rpm (revolutions per minute), that is around 27 rps -- whichmeans that the blades will appear to occupy the same position 110 times in a second,Thus when the fan is rotating at full speed it is possible that the image profile of its blade may give an illusion of rotation in the anti-clockwise direction (the blades of anormal table fan rotate clockwise). A normal ceiling fan on the other hand rotates witha speed not exceeding 800 rpm; thus, it is unlikely that we will experience a similar illusion in this case. However, when the tube gets weak after being used for a long timor the frequency of the AC supply is very low (as may be the case with AC supplyfrom an invertor) we may experience this illusion with ceiling fans also.Thus, almost all similar observations are easily explained. To see a convincing
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