Xref: utzoo misc.consumers:4896 sci.electronics:2944
Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!tness7!tness1!flatline!erict
From: erict@flatline.UUCP (eric townsend)
Newsgroups: misc.consumers,sci.electronics
Subject: Re: fluorescent lights and my brain
Summary: silly question about medical research and this...
Keywords: eyes head ache electricity
Message-ID: <636@flatline.UUCP>
Date: 12 May 88 04:09:13 GMT
References: <530@scourge> <1182@ssc.UUCP> <1532@dataio.Data-IO.COM> <2427@ttidca.TTI.COM>
Organization: den of sinister exaggerators -- houston.montrose
Lines: 29

In article <2427@ttidca.TTI.COM>, hollombe@ttidca.UUCP writes:

[some discussion about flourescents and flickering and headaches delted]

> All of the above is overlooking a rather important physiological point.
> According to my psych. course in Sensation and Perception, under ideal
> circumstances the maximum flicker rate detectable by the typical human eye
> is about 60 hz.  That's why projectors in movie theaters open and close
> their shutters 3 times per frame, yielding an undetectable flicker rate of
> 72 Hz (and why movies were called the "flicks" before they discovered that
> trick).

> Therefore, if fluorescent tubes strobe at 120 Hz, they can't be causing
> your headache problems.  Your eyes are physiologically incapable of
> detecting the flicker.

Are our eyes physiologically incapable of detecting the flicker, or are
our tests incapable of detecting the response our eyes have to the flicker?
Before I was old enough to understand the difference between flours and
incans, flour lights caused me eyestrain and headaches.  (This could
have been caused by other effects, but I doubt it.)  Even now, flour lights
bother me... I just stay out of them as much as possible, and try and
have incans in whatever office space I'm working.

Just curious.
-- 
                                Know Future
Another journalist with too many spare MIPS.
J. Eric Townsend ->uunet!nuchat!flatline!erict smail:511Parker#2,Hstn,Tx,77007