June 27th, 2007 by Matt B
Spinning Girl Illusion
Look at this silhouette of a spinning girl below, is she spinning clockwise or counter-clockwise?
If you look at her long enough she will appear to spin in the opposite direction.. It took me about a minute for the spinning to reverse, I found it helped to momentarily look away from the image.
How long did it take you?
Share This
Filed under: illusions
It took me about 3 minutes to see her spinning anticlockwise. She spins clockwise on her left leg and anticlockwise on her right!
very cool illusion
There actually is a correct answer.
Here’s a link to the solution of the spinning girl illusion, worked out by Matthew Fekete:
http://www.bobtechnologies.com/Linkage/SpinningGirl.jpg
Matthew solved the puzzle by pulling the original image (called an “animated gif”) into an image editor, and examining each frame in the sequence.
A basic rule of perspective is that when a thing is close it appears larger, and vice versa. Thus, if the spinning image was created from a video of a real person, then it follows that even a silhouetted version would reveal some minute clues as to the orientation of the spin.
The key, then, is to watch the size of the foot on her upraised leg: being at the end of her longest extremity, it is the part of her that is aways the farthest away from her center of rotation, and thus will reveal the most difference in apparent size as it swings towards the viewer and then away.
Bottom line: the correct answer is CLOCKWISE. For more details, see Matthew’s explanation at the link.
So if you thought the dancer was spinning clockwise, you are EITHER right-brained (and thus more creative), OR you are incredibly observant. Or some pleasant combination of the two.
If, like I did, you mostly saw her spinning counterclockwise, it probably means you are extremely intelligent and rational, and that people like you, and want to, like, be with you.
-A
Thanks for the explanation and link Andy. I mostly see the figure spinning clockwise, I guess no one wants to be with me ;)
/Matt
I saw it spinning counterclockwise….. i think… or is it clockwise…..?
So I heard elsewhere that the image wasn’t actually spinning at all and that it was just flopping back and forth. Our minds are just so used to wanting to see a full image or 3D image that it gives us the effect of a spinning girl. Which can be reasonable because some people see clockwise while others see counter clockwise or both.
Sorry.. your friend is wrong about there being a correct direction. It’s an optical illusion where they eliminate all sense of depth so you have no idea if she’s facing forward or backward at any given time. Whichever way you identify her at first is how your mind will keep her going due to your in-grained concept of momentum.
It may or may not prove right or left brainedness.. My guess is not but it’s fun anyways. The bigger proof of right or left brain is how you respond to it. Whether you try to find the “correct” solution or you just believe it and think it’s cool. (I’m def right brain LOL)
I created this as as proof of concept lol.. it’s funny how her leg switches itself =P.
It wouldn’t take much effort to create a cheat image to make you think it’s going one way or the other to get your head in gear for when you look at it =).
http://i257.photobucket.com/albums/hh207/juggler9/AlwaysForward.gif
actually, if you use the proof of concept animation and just cover her eyes at any point in time, she’ll continue in whichever direction she was going when you covered them =)