How many frames does it take to see motion?
Increase the frame rate until you no longer see a series of photos but a running horse. Submit at that moment.
The experiment starts as soon as the page has loaded (JavaScript is required).
Try the experiment: your result will appear here, next to what most people do.
What just happened (read it after the experiment)
What most people do: Most people see smooth motion from 10 to 12 frames per second.
At around ten frames per second, your brain stops seeing separate pictures and invents the motion between them.
Silent films ran at around 16 to 18 frames per second; the talkies set the standard at 24, for the sake of sound quality. A two-hour film thus contains 172,800 photographs.
The motion you see at the movies doesn’t exist on the screen: it exists in your head.
More experiments
Sources
- Joseph and Barbara Anderson, “The myth of persistence of vision revisited,” Journal of Film and Video, 1993.