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Benham's Wheel

BenhamsWheel

Benham's wheel is an optical illusion consisting of a spinnable top marked in black with the pattern shown above. When the wheel is spun (especially slowly), the black broken lines appear as green, blue, and red colored bands.

The effect depends on the color of lighting. With blue light, there is only a silver effect. With red light, all colors appear.

See also

Illusion

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References

Archimedes' Lab. "Optical Tops to Make." https://www.archimedes-lab.org/workshoptop.html.Cohen, J. and Gordon, D. A. "The Prevost-Fechner-Benham Subjective Colors." Psycholog. Bull. 46, 97-136, 1949.Festinger, L.; Allyn, M. R.; and White, C. W. "The Perception of Color with Achromatic Stimulation." Vision Res. 11, 591-612, 1971.Fineman, M. The Nature of Visual Illusion. New York: Dover, pp. 148-151, 1996.Kunsemüller, J. Meyers Lexikon der Technik und der exakten Naturwissenschaften, Bd. 1. A - E. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1970.Trolland, T. L. "The Enigma of Color Vision." Amer. J. Physiology 2, 23-48, 1921.

Referenced on Wolfram|Alpha

Benham's Wheel

Cite this as:

Weisstein, Eric W. "Benham's Wheel." From MathWorld--A Wolfram Resource. https://mathworld.wolfram.com/BenhamsWheel.html

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