Benham's Top - an interactive demonstration

Benham's top is one of many classic examples of subjective colors.  One should be able to see faint colors in the positions of the arcs of the black-and-white spinning circular disk.The saturation of the perceived colors can be adjusted by changing the spinning speed with the slider control. Different sections of the arcs produce different colors.  When the disk spins clockwise, the perceived colors change from yellowish for the inner arcs to bluish for the outer arcs.  This order of the perceived colors reverses if the disk spins counterclockwise.

Touching the disk stops the spinning.

This interactive demonstration of Benham's Top was originally developed in 1999 as a Java applet and later ported to a Silverlight app rich internet application, both of which ran on this page. Unfortunately, both Java applets and Silverlight apps are no longer supported by most browsers.