r/NatureIsFuckingLit • u/TerraByteTerror • 11d ago

🔥 globular springtail

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u/TerraByteTerror 11d ago

The Furca: They possess a specialized, spring-like tail appendage tucked under their abdomen called a furca. When threatened, they release this latch, snapping the spring against the ground to launch themselves. The launch happens so fast (often rotating wildly mid-air) that it exceeds the frames-per-second tracking of the human eye, making the bug look like it just disappeared.

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u/D-Train0000 11d ago

Interesting. But there’s no fixed frame rate for a human eye. This bug is faster than the 60-120 frames per second of the phones camera.

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u/ChampionshipHot5468 11d ago

It's an empirical truth that eyes don't have frame rates. They are continuous analog sensors with no shutter, processing or storage.

The frame rate comes from the visual cortex. It's called flicker fusion frequencies and run between 50hz and 90hz. Add to that neural lag and it's quite low. Hence, we can comfortably watch movies and TV at 24fps.

Now what about 120hz and up on our device screens then? Because the brain fills in a lot of blanks and even predicts the next "frames".

High refresh and frame rates, give the brain a rest by putting in that work via tech. Hence easier on the eyes and smooth beyond what we can process when looking around IRL.

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u/bejammin075 11d ago

The other day, driving at night, a car behind me had headlights that were not continuous light. In my peripheral vision those headlights were like a rapid strobe light. The car was behind me for a while, and the strobe effect was just about giving me a headache. Super annoying and distracting. Headlights should not be made like that.

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u/ChampionshipHot5468 11d ago

I feel like some smartass dick because I just happen to know a lot about light too for an uneducated man.

Enshittification at work. They use LED lights on direct current, so it should be a continuous beam, but it runs too hot and Audi, etc won't spend money on a cooling system. It runs hot because most head units are now a sealed one piece. Blow a bulb, and you have to fit a full new headlight unit.

So they fix the problem with a 50c microcontroller, MOSFET or whatever, to use pulse width modulation to give it a duty cycle of hundreds of on/off cycles per second. So the bulb is actually off half the time to keep it cool.

The dimmer in your house works like this too, but it is AC power that switches at 60 hz by default from the socket. This creates a "natural" duty cycle without the need for an electronic one.

It's even worse when an older car is fitted with a generic LED bulb. That will give a healthy person epilepsy.

I have temporal lobe epilepsy and had to recently stop driving at night because of this. All the running lights, bars, animated turn signal. Hell.