CHECK IT...

 

That... was weird.

 

pretty cool. just annoying to see that little minus sign blinking at 9 o'clock.

 

Mad crazy! I'd like to see how this works.

 

i seen something like this before, with an american flag. basically, your eyes, or i guess your retina has the color burned in, and it starts showing different colors...

ok, nevermind.. that was the worse explaination ever... i am sure if you do a google search, it will tell you... i suck..

 

wow, interesting captain!

I know that red and green are complementary colors in color wheels (ok pink and lime green, close enough)...you mix them together and you see the mixture as "black." hmmm. I wonder if this would work if the colors were light blue and pink?

 

Interesting!

 

Seen it before, but is still very interesting.

Wish it would be explained!

 

The complimentary color explaination is partially true. When you mix comp. colors you get neutral grey. This explains the grey background which is the shade of grey you would get if you mixed the pink and green colors of the dial together.

The green dot not being there is true. here is a freeze of the animation to demonstrate:


This phenom is explained by the fatiguing of the rods and cones (the things that make you see color/light) in your eyes. As you stare at the pink color, the rods and cones fatigue and try to replace the pink color with it's compliment (the minty green color). This effect is shown quite well with this picture:



Stare directly at the most bottom right black star until you start to see it shimmer a little, then quickly look at a white surface (wall, paper etc) you will see a nice red white and blue ghost image of the flag (blink once or twice to reinforce this trick and notice it starts to disipate.) This is the same phenom.

A more simple demonstration using the first picture is to simply stare at the cross of my freeze frame...all the dots will eventually disappear and when they do, just move your eyes to the white space next to the image and you will a series of green dots.

As the missing dot moves around the board the eye is tricked into percieving the two colors combined. First your eye is constantly bombarded by the ever present pink dot, then it is wisked away causing you eye to force the green dot to come out. Now a third trick is cleverly hidden within it all and that trick is Persistence of vision(POV). This phenom is what alows us to percieve motion pictures, tv, video or movement on computer screens etc etc.

The fact you are told to stare at the cross in the center plays upon your peripheral vision which makes the fatigue process happen much faster, because you are forced to make your eyes work much harder to gather information, subconciously.

POV allows us to think that both colors are happening at the same time which...when mixed together produces the same grey color as the background and VIOLA!!! the pink dot disappears and the continous movement and replacement of colors and POV causes us to contantly "see" the green dot.

Thats is how I remeber my lesson from my foundation classes in color back in the old college days. I hope it helps. I love optical illusion stuff

 

Thanks for the great explanation. That flag thing is quite cool.