Swans on Tea

Cool illusion. Bad Astronomy: The blue and the green
This is why I tell people over and over again: you cannot trust what you see even with your own eyes. Your eyes are not cameras faithfully taking pictures of absolute truth of all that surrounds you. They have filters, and your brain has to interpret [...]

Magnificent CG Impossible Objects and more Impossible Objects

Ames’ Window
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Teacher: Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?
Student (raising hand enthusuastically): Meeeee!
Teacher: Quiet down, Lamont.
A shoe illusion. Hovering shoe with a shadow? Who knows?

The break of the curveball illusion.
In baseball, a curveball creates a physical effect and a perceptual puzzle. The physical effect (the curve) arises because the ball’s rotation leads to a deflection in the ball’s path. The perceptual puzzle arises because the deflection is actually gradual but is often perceived as an abrupt change in direction [...]

Skulls in the Stars: Optics in the Haunted Mansion!
The Haunted Mansion is one of my favorites, with its classic Gothic ghost story atmosphere and dark sense of humor. As a child, I was terrified of the essentially harmless attraction. This trip, as a professor of optics, I was delighted to not only [...]

Magic and the Brain: Teller Reveals the Neuroscience of Illusion
“Tricks work only because magicians know, at an intuitive level, how we look at the world,” says Macknik, lead author of the paper. “Even when we know we’re going to be tricked, we still can’t see it, which suggests that magicians are fooling the mind at [...]

record-breaking jet sleds and rooftops
Various test tracks around the world, starting with the aircraft carrier arresting-gear test facility. Check out the vanishing-point optical illusion, too, in the link.

Box illusion

Magenta Ain’t A Colour
When our eyes see colours, they are actually detecting the different wavelengths of the light hitting the retina. Colours are distinguished by their wavelengths, and the brain processes this information and produces a visual display that we experience as colour.
This means that colours only really exist within the brain – light [...]

Optical Illusions and the Illusion of Love

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