Autokinetic effect

Do you know when you stare at a star in the sky on a clear night for a while, it seems to move a little bit? That is called the autokinetic effect! It happens because our eyes don't have anything around the star to compare to, so our brain has a hard time figuring out if the star is moving or if our eyes are moving.

It's like if you were standing on a boat in the middle of the ocean and the boat was moving. You might think that the whole world is moving instead of just the boat. That's kind of what happens with the autokinetic effect.

Scientists use the autokinetic effect to study things like how our eyes and brain work together. They might show people different colors or patterns and ask them how much they're moving around. That helps them understand how our brains interpret what we see!