Keep Your Eye on the Ball

The Visual Cognition Lab at the University of Illinois has some pretty stunning visual affects available on their web site. One of their movies in particular I’ve shown to a few people and some have refused to believe what they saw.

The movie is of two groups of three people; one group wearing white shirts, the other wearing black shirts. Each group controls a basketball. The object is to count how many times the white-shirted team passes the ball to each other; only the passes between the white team members count. All six participants are continuously moving around, so you have to pay attention to the where the ball is. The black team also has a ball, but their passes do not count.

Before you follow the link there are a couple of things to keep in mind:

• You must have QuickTime installed.
• Make sure that the entire movie has downloaded before you begin playing, or it may stop in the middle waiting for the download to complete, which will probably ruin the effect.
• Only play the movie once through, before coming back here and checking your answer.
• Count the white team passes only.

Follow this link to the movie here. Again, please wait for the entire move to download.

Once you have seen the movie and have your count, check it against the answer here.