The stopped clock
Stare at the cross. When the clock appears to the side, move your eyes to it quickly and watch its first second.
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: Many people feel as if the hand stays frozen for a moment.
During the rapid jump of your eyes, you see nothing. To fill that gap, your brain backdates the image of the clock to the start of the jump: so the first second seems longer.
The effect was measured in 2001 by Kielan Yarrow and his colleagues, and published in Nature. It is called chronostasis.
Your brain constantly rewrites the recent past to give you a seamless present.
More experiments
Sources
- Kielan Yarrow et al., “Illusory perceptions of space and time preserve cross-saccadic perceptual continuity,” Nature, 2001.