Don’t even know should I flair this as physics or biology lol
In: 1239
This is actually super interesting, and you are correct that it is Biology. The effect is called “chronostasis”, and it will also probably change how you think about how you experience reality!
Humans aren’t that great in visual acuity but we can distinguish colors fairly well compared to other animals, and we are *amazing* at visual processing. We may not be able to see tiny details in the distance like a hawk or operate in dim light like a cat, but we can form a 3D mental model of the world like no other. There is speculation that this evolved along with the ability of humans to throw weapons at stuff. But whatever the reason there is significant brain resource devoted to processing visual stimuli from our binocular vision.
However, binocular vision requires both eyes to focus on one spot. Our eyes can follow a focused target as it moves, but they really can’t smoothly sweep across our visual field. That is just too hard to process, so our eyes naturally jump from point to point. BUT, when our eyes are doing that jump (called “saccades”) our brain just doesn’t even try to understand the blurry mess of sensation that comes in. In essence you momentarily go *completely blind*!
But you don’t *feel* like you went blind, right? Your vision doesn’t go black or anything and it seems like you could see that whole time. The reason is because our brains fill in the lag while our eyes are moving, making it seem like instead of being blind for that time we were seeing something. What is really weird is that our brains fill it in with **what we see when they stop**! Yes, our brains go back and edit our memory of a split second ago to make it seem like we were looking at our new point of focus the whole time our eyes were moving to actually see it!
This is what is happening when you look at the clock’s second hand. When you glance over to the clock your brain will tell you that you were looking at it for longer than you actually were, adding that time while your eyes were moving but you didn’t actually see the clock yet. If the second hand was moving while your eyes were then your brain will think the second hand was in its new position for longer than it actually was. Based on that flawed memory it will seem like the second hand stayed there longer than a second! That is why the first second sometimes seems longer than it should when you glance over to the clock!
It’s a fluke in how your vision works.
Basically when your eyes move, you sort of, go temporarily blind. Not in a true sense, but you lose the ability to make out details. You can really only pick up shapes and movement (which is an evolutionary trait).
When your eyes stop, it takes a moment (fraction of a second) for your brain to register new details, so you see a kind of “still image” for that fraction of a second.
Normally you don’t even notice it, but clocks point it out, since they have a hand that moves every second, you notice it.
Vsauce has a great video on it, called Stopped Clock Illusion.
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beyond what has been said already since you didnt specify which clock you are talking about specifically there is also the special case of analog clock at train stations where the first second actually takes longer than all other.
This is because a train station typically has multiple clocks that should all show the same time and they archive this by having the seconds run a little bit too fast and then pause at the 12 position until the clock receives a sync signal and starts counting the next minute.
that makes it so all clocks are getting synchronized at every full minute so any variation could only happen within that minute and nobody will usually notice these.
You perceive reality with about a half second lag. When you look at the watch suddenly, you perceive the position of the second hand about half a second later. So that doesn’t feel too weird, your brain helpfully pretends to your consciousness that you’ve been seeing it in that same position for the whole of that half second (though really it was in its previous position). Then of course it remains in the same position for up to another whole second. Making it seem like it was there for a second and a half in total. But it wasn’t. And you know it wasn’t, because it’s a second hand. But it still looks like it was still for a second and a half because your consciousness is a half a second behind reality and your brain lies to you.
Once you’ve got your head round that, think about a police sniper watching a stakeout or whatever. They have less than a second to respond if the perp raises their gun – so are they conscious of their decision to pull the trigger? They will feel like they were, but they couldn’t have been. It was a reflex action and their brain lies to them that they made the decision.
Look at the stop light, red. Glance at my radio for literally 1.2 seconds. Look back at the light, green. OMG HOW LONG HAVE I BEEN HOLDING THESE PEOPLE UP?!
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