why do the wheels of a car appear to be spinning in reverse when the car is traveling at high speed?

Answer 1

there are custom rims that spin and don't spin to give a car a effect like that

Answer 2

It has to do with how fast your eye can process what its seeing. At a certain speed, depending on the size of the tire, your eye reads the rotation in just the right way that the position on the wheel seems to be slightly behind where it was the last time your brain read it. Like a flip book, repeat this over and over in your brain, and the wheel looks like its going backwards.

Answer 3

they actually dont in person. They only do on TV due to the way the cameras capture the images. The frames per second are often in a way that makes the wheels not quite finish their revolution between frames, so when put together, it looks like theyre spinning in reverse.

Answer 4

Kyle has it. In real life you don't see "frame at a time" followed by successive frames as in movies or on TV.

You might be aware with high speed strobe lights you can capture Michael Jordan successive images as he slam-dunks.

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If you were to synchronize the strobe flash you can "freeze" rotation. Timing lights for adjusting distributors on older cars (that used distributors) used this fact.