eli5, why does the first second seem to last longer when you being to look at a clock/timer?
In: 6
You feel like the first second you look at on the clock is longer as your brain fills in the “gaps” caused when your eye was moving and your vision was blurred. The information it got after your eyes arrived on the clock was “stationary hand” so your brain back-fills the gap in the “video” with “stationary hand” during the whole duration of the eye movement as well, so you experience “seeing it” not moving for longer than it actually was.
This perceived “longer first second” is a great (and kind of disturbing) reminder and demo of how what we experience is created by our brains and is not a direct or exact representation of the actual physical world. Your body is a bunch of sensors for light, sound, etc. and then your brain takes all of these inputs and creates an experience of the world to match the incoming data as best it can. It’s usually accurate, because brains are amazingly good at their job, but it can be wrong. Even simple optical illusions are more proof of this.
https://www.iflscience.com/when-you-look-at-a-clock-why-does-that-first-second-seem-longer-than-usual-67745
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