The Best Illusion of the Year was just announced, and the grand prize goes to a trippy demonstration of how curve balls flummox batters. Four visual researchers--Arthur Shapiro, Zhong-Lin Lu, Emily Knight and Robert Ennis--collaborated on the illusion.
The winners resolve a conundrum that baseball players have always faced: The "break" in a curveball. A curveball occurs because of the ball's topspin, but it curves gradually during the baseball's flight, and by just a couple feet. But for batters, the ball seems to jump several feet nearly instanteously. The illusion by Sharpio et al shows that crazy things happen when you switch from your peripheral vision to your central vision; objects can appear to move more than they actually do. A curveball can appear to break. Still images can't convey how bizarre the effect is, watch the animation here.
The award, which is given away each year at the Vision Sciences Society Meeting, wasn't just a lark for the the participants. Illusions have long been used to test exactly how our vision works, and the competitors were mostly scientists who've recently published their illusory findings in academic journals. Second place went to an experiment in creating "afterimage" colors; third prize went to a demonstration that simply changing the contrast on an androgynous face chances whether we see it as female or male:
You can see the list of ten finalists here.
[Via Physorg; Top image by DJ Anto D]
Related Stories: | Topics:Innovation, Technology, baseball, Curve ball, Illusions, Vision research, Best Illusion of the Year, Arthur Shapiro, Zhong-Lin Lu, Emily Knight, Robert Ennis, Arthur Shapiro, Emily Knight, Robert Ennis, Zhong-Lin Lu, Vision-Sciences Inc. |
Email
Digg
StumbleUpon
Facebook
Buzz Up!
LinkedIn
Recent Comments | 6 Total
August 6, 2009 at 10:46am by aliya david
The Best Visual illusion of the Year Contest is a celebration of the ingenuity and creativity of the world’s premier visual illusion research community. Contestants from all around the world have submitted novel visual illusions (unpublished, or published no earlier than 2008), and an international panel of judges has rated them and narrowed them to the TOP TEN.
dofus kamas
August 15, 2009 at 11:21am by homme rock
No batter has the bat speed to watch a pitch the whole way they decide in the first half of the pitch where to the bat needs to be and guess what type of pitch it is.
If the ball has great movement they look like idiots if they don't they get a piece of it. If it hangs they picther looks like a fool.
identity protection service
August 25, 2009 at 11:42am by homme rock
They focus on the ball with central vision at first and then depend on peripheral vision when it gets close. No one could turn there head fast enough to continue looking at a 95 MPH pitch with their central vision without breaking their neck. Batters depend on peripheral vision to make contact.
acne treatment here
August 27, 2009 at 4:09am by homme rock
The Best Illusion of the Year was just announced, and the grand prize goes to a trippy demonstration of how curve balls flummox batters. Four visual researchers--Arthur Shapiro, Zhong-Lin Lu, Emily Knight and Robert Ennis--collaborated on the illusion.
best acne solutions
October 14, 2009 at 8:22am by dentist brighton
All the three winners announced had the the unique experiment i must say..
N the demonstration on the baseball according to the vision was fantastic to discover..
Dentist in Brighton
Dentists in Brighton
November 12, 2009 at 1:23pm by dentistcoventry dentistcoventry
Human eyes are so versatile.. i am just amazed
6 month smiles Coventry