Charles Benhamho (1895) created a toy top painted with the pattern (images on next page). When you spin the disk, arcs of color (called “pattern induced flicker colors”) show up around the disk. And different people see different colors!
We can’t really say why this happens, but there are a few interesting theories. Your eyeball has two different ways of seeing light: cones and rods. Cones are used for color vision and for seeing bright light, and there are three types of cones (red, green, and blue). Rods are important for seeing in low light.
One possibility is… Please login or register to read the rest of this content.
Hi Mary,
I’ve sent you a private message by email. 🙂
Aurora
Hello,
I am reviewing the Ultimate Science Curriculum and was hoping to print up some things. I do plan to purchase it, once I do will I have access to all the downloads?
Thank you,
Mary
We used a snap-it electronics kit that had a ‘helicopter’ part to spin our disks, using double-sided scotch tape between the blades and the disk. At first, we did not see color. However, we did see a 3D effect with some disks, which was cool. But then we noticed we could see color when we turned off the power and the disks slowed down. Very neat effect. I saw yellows and yellow-greens. My grandmother (Terri) saw reds and yellows. So we figured I saw just down the spectrum from her. The disks with narrow alternating solid-pattern did not show any color that we could see. It was f-u-u-u-n!
Xander
We got it to work now thanks!
The PDF file requires Adobe Acrobat to read it, which you can download there. You also can’t download the file unless you’re logged in, so be sure to do that first. I just tried it, and it popped right up… let me know if you still have trouble.
We can’t find the file what should we do?
Whoops – sorry about the bad filename.. try again?
The PDF file isn’t there for the Benham’s disk.