Does anyone else like optical illusions?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Dembadon
  • Start date Start date
  • Tags Tags
    Optical
Click For Summary

Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around the fascination with optical illusions, sharing experiences, and exploring various types of illusions. Participants discuss specific examples, their effects, and personal preferences regarding different illusions.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory
  • Debate/contested
  • Conceptual clarification

Main Points Raised

  • Some participants express enjoyment of optical illusions and share links to websites featuring various demonstrations.
  • One participant mentions the "Breathing Square" illusion, noting its deceptive appearance due to limited initial viewing.
  • Another participant questions whether there is a measure of how effective an optical illusion is, leading to a humorous response about subjective measures.
  • One participant suggests that while individual effects can be measured, a standard measure for effectiveness of illusions is not established due to the complexity of the subject.
  • Participants share personal techniques for viewing "magic eye" images, with differing experiences regarding effectiveness.
  • The "Rotating Snakes" illusion is highlighted as particularly impactful by one participant.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants generally agree on the enjoyment of optical illusions and share personal favorites, but there is no consensus on how to measure their effectiveness or the best methods for viewing certain types of illusions.

Contextual Notes

Some discussions touch on subjective experiences and the challenges of quantifying the effects of optical illusions, indicating a lack of established standards in the field.

Dembadon
Gold Member
Messages
660
Reaction score
88
http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/

I just spent the last 45 minutes looking at some of the demonstrations on that site. Apart from sore eyes and a minor headache, I find it fascinating. Most of the demonstrations allow you to manipulate sliders to adjust different aspects of the illusion. Some of them seemed bogus: telling me things were or weren't moving when I swore otherwise. I wouldn't know how to go about proving any shenanigans, though.

Anyway, does anyone else like optical illusions? If so, what are some of your favorites?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Physics news on Phys.org


Good catch.
I have seen a lot of them previously.

The new ones for me were the blurring ie the angry face and the Lincoln pictures.
Never used to understand what squinting ever did for sight improvement - now I know.
 


256bits said:
Good catch.
I have seen a lot of them previously.

The new ones for me were the blurring ie the angry face and the Lincoln pictures.
Never used to understand what squinting ever did for sight improvement - now I know.

I'd only seen a few of them before. One of my favorites was the "Breathing Square." It looked like the square was getting bigger, but that's only because our initial view is limited by the slits.
 


Dembadon said:
http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/

I just spent the last 45 minutes looking at some of the demonstrations on that site. Apart from sore eyes and a minor headache, I find it fascinating. Most of the demonstrations allow you to manipulate sliders to adjust different aspects of the illusion. Some of them seemed bogus: telling me things were or weren't moving when I swore otherwise. I wouldn't know how to go about proving any shenanigans, though.

Anyway, does anyone else like optical illusions? If so, what are some of your favorites?

Here's another page:

http://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/~akitaoka/index-e.html
 
Is there a measure of how effective an optical illusion is?
 
Loren Booda said:
Is there a measure of how effective an optical illusion is?

Yes, it's called the "dude, come look at this" and it's units are "WTF?"
 
Loren Booda said:
Is there a measure of how effective an optical illusion is?
You can certainly measure the effect on the individual compared to other individuals within a single illusion (http://ripplestat.com/dnlds/task_directions/ml_directions.pdf" ) given that that some properties of the illusion can be quantified.

If you were to do this with several different illusions, you might be able to see which illusion fooled more people in a given sample, but I don't think there's some standard measure established; External validity is a huge problem with this complex of a system. Mapping mind to brain is one of the big projects going on in the scientific community right now, so there could very well be some paper/s on your very question for all I know. There's lots of papers (some very speculative) on the subject of subjectiveness.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ttd0YjXF0no
 
  • #10
I loved the "magic eye" books.

Here is one. Just touch your nose to the screen and slowly pull away without focusing, once you see the 3D image, you can focus on it. Doing it on the computer is so much easier than the book!

http://www.magiceye.com/
 
  • #11
Evo said:
I loved the "magic eye" books.

Here is one. Just touch your nose to the screen and slowly pull away without focusing, once you see the 3D image, you can focus on it. Doing it on the computer is so much easier than the book!

http://www.magiceye.com/

I like them as well. I was never able to get it to work with the method you mention, though. The only way is works for me is to "defocus" my eyes and kind-of stare through the page for a few seconds. When I refocus them, I can usually see the embedded image. Putting my nose on the page and pulling it away never really worked as well, even though the focus/defocus component is the same for each.
 
Last edited:
  • #12
Magic-eye is better than drugs.
 

Similar threads

Graduate Optical tweezers for manipulating atoms together to form new structure
  • · Replies 2 ·
Replies
2
Views
2K
The Scientist as Hero - or not
  • · Replies 1 ·
Replies
1
Views
3K
Graduate What Makes Orodruin's Physics Journey Unique?
  • · Replies 17 ·
Replies
17
Views
5K
Graduate Note the comment on SR herein:
  • · Replies 2 ·
Replies
2
Views
3K