Showing posts with label illusion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label illusion. Show all posts

07 January 2010

Leaning Tower

Is it time for another optical illusion? I think it is!


Believe it or not... that is the same image twice. No, really. I'll wait while you go to photoshop or gimp or your image software of choice. Or, you can just blink really fast - it'll trick your brain. Totally. I'm not even there to watch you, what makes you think I'm messing with you?

The explanation, as near as I can tell, is that your brain sees the image as one scene. Thus, the tower on the left is used as a point of reference for the vertical of the tower on the right. The result is that the image on the right seems to be significantly more skewed than the image on the left.

Neat.

(Thanks to The Thinking Blog for the heads-up.)

(Who tried the blinking thing? It totally worked didn't it?)

18 August 2009

Spirals!...?

Check out these cool spirals made out of squares...


Wait, what? Those aren't spirals! Look closer...


This is one of those great illusions where even if you know what you're looking at, your brain can't help but trick you.

Thanks to Bad Astronomy for posting it, who got it from Richard Wiseman.