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Make a science spinner

This activity will take 30 minutes, is for ages 7 to 10 with supervision needed. You can do this activity at home.

Hands over a circle with a DNA graphic
Make a mini movie and trick your brain into seeing something that isn’t there.

Your eyes send information to your brain. Your brain can only process this information at its own speed and when things move too quickly, it can make mistakes.

A thaumotrope is a spinning toy invented way back in the 1800s. It tricks your brain into seeing two different images together as one image. This is like how videos trick your brain into seeing a many separate images as a moving picture. 

What you'll need

  • Card or stiff paper 
  • Two 50cm lengths of string
  • Pens and pencils 
  • Scissors 

Step by step

Draw a circle

Carefully cut a circle and two smaller circles out of your card. You could draw around a cup to help you draw your circles.

Someone holds a drinking glass in one hand and a pencil in the other hand. They are drawing around the glass to draw a perfect circle on a piece of paper

Fun facts

This illusion helps us understand how your brain works. Your brain receives information from your sensory organs such as your eyes and nose. These organs send information through a network of nerve cells called your nervous system. Your nervous system can send messages quickly, but when objects move too fast it can get confused.

When your thaumotrope spins slowly, your eyes and brain can easily work out there are two images. When it spins faster your brain can’t keep up. In its confusion, your brain interprets the two rapidly changing images as one.

As well as receiving information from your senses, your brain makes predictions about what it expects will happen based on your past experiences. These two sources of information combine to create what you see. 
 

Crick scientists

Here at the Crick, scientists are finding out how the brain and the nervous system work. They’re studying what’s different in the brains and nervous systems of people living with certain diseases. This will help us treat those diseases and make people feel better. Learning how nerve cells work and why they sometimes don’t work might also help us prevent and treat diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

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