Optical Ilusions Essay Example

another instance is the Rubin vase. Rubin vase was discovered by the Danish psychologist Edgar Rubin.

It has a vase and two faces. But we can’t watch both at the same time. When two fields have a common border, one is seen as figure and the other as background.

Distorting illusions are characterized by distortions of size, length, or curvature.

A striking example is the Cafe wall illusion. Another example is the famous Muller-Lyer illusion. Muller-Lyer takes advantage of processes that the brain uses to judge depth and distance. It consists of two arrows, one with both ends pointing in and one with both ends pointing out.Both have exactly the same length.

Depending on the orientation of the arrowheads the line may look shorter or longer.

Paradox illusions are generated by objects that are paradoxical or impossible, such as the Penrose triangle or impossible staircases. The Penrose triangle, also known as a tribar, is one of the most famous and one of the simplest impossible objects. It was first created by the swedish artist Oscar Reutersvard. It is named after mathematician Roger Penrose, who popularised it in the 1950s. The tribar appears to be a solid object.

Fictional illusions are defined as the perception of objects that are genuinely not there to all but a single observer. These are more properly called hallucinations. The scope of optical illusion is not limited to the artificial ones. In fact artificial illusions they were inspired from the natural ones.

Different animals use their camouflaging abilities to hide from their predators or when they are on hunt. Here is an image of stick insect camouflaging itself. Some butterflies also have dots on their wings that resemble

eyes. Hence successfully scaring away their predictorsMirage is another example of natural optical illusion.

This phenomenon is caused by rays of light refracted in layers of air having different densities. This refraction causes an imaginary pond of water to appear on surface. This photo shows the floor tiles at the Basilica of St. John Lateran, located in Rome.

The pattern is actually two dimensional, but it appears to be three dimensional. Optical illusions are very useful and they can affect our daily lives too. They are used in different exams to gauge the intelligence, psychology and interpretation skills of a person. Camouflaging abilities of animals are also replicated to hide soldiers, tanks, ships, nuclear reactors and other defense related installations.

Artists such as MC Escher and other have long used illusion in art, creating images that are visually intriguing as well as artistic, stimulating both the mind and the eye. Other artists who have produced optical illusion masterpieces include Dali, Raphael, and Seurat, among many others. Architects use optical illusion in buildings to create the illusion of depth and space. Magicians use it in tricks for our amusement.