Science Fair Central A good place to start a project. Includes handbook, project ideas, links and books.  Visual Perception Peter K.Kaiser, York University The Joy of Visual Perception: A Web Book Optical Illusions Japanese website Japanese language but well worth a ...

Can Bryce 3D make illusions? Yes it can. Bryce is just my cup of tea when it comes to rendering optical illusions. It is inexpensive, and best of all it loves Photoshop. It comes with tons of built-in mountains, skies, rocks, terrains, and a whole library of preset materials; a mood for every ...

Here are two verticle lines of identical length. One has reversed arrowheads while the other's look normal. One of the lines looks longer! Something about the arrowheads are distorting our perception. It may be our "built-in" sense of perspective.Adjust the blue line on the left by pulling the ...

Top Hat Illusion Did you know that there is a famous illusion associated with Lincoln's hat? Consider the size of this president's stove pipe hat. Namely it's height, and it's width including the brim. Is the hat taller than it is wide? The hat is exactly as tall as it is wide! Use the ...

A familiar checkerboard pattern. The rows and columns are neatly aligned and square. Watch the pattern bend when you move either slider bar! Note: The slider bars do nothing to the geometry of the pattern. They simply move rows and columns back and forth.The effect was first noticed on a cafe ...

The Hidden Dog Illusion The art of blending into a background. This demonstration illustrates the basic principle of Camouflage. There is a cute dog hidden in the picture above. Can you find it? It is very hard to find because the background pattern is made up of random elements very similar to ...

This popular comic strip had two different stories running at the same time. You could follow a second story by turning the cartoon upside down. In this example, the first panel shows Lady Lovekins being harrassed by a giant bird. Upside down, it shows a big fish upsetting old man Muffaroo's ...

There are two competing aspects in this illustration. One is the obvious shape of a goblet. The other, more subtle aspect, consists of two opposing faces in profile formed by the goblet stem against the background. This kind of ambiguous illusion is called a "figure-ground reversal" because ...

Teachers, schools, students, classrooms, and education professionals around the world show off their websites. Add your link today! Grades K1 - 8 Super Science Fair Projects Science fair projects, topics, experiments and ideas. How-to choose and do science fair projects: ...

A 2009 Engagement Calendar for the Visually Intrigued Since the Renaissance, artists have relied on rigorous laws of perspective to produce orderly, rational images of the world. In this engagement calendar, Robert Ausbourne violates every optical law in the book, presenting pictures that ...

Circular Pattern I A moiré pattern is the combination of two or more patterns viewed at the same time. This example will produce a weird moiré of rotating, parallel lines. To produce the moiré drag the top pattern slightly with your mouse. Note:  A slight movement makes a big difference.

Shepard's Scale  Like the endless staircase, these twelve musical notes go up or down forever. It's impossible! Pass your mouse over the dots one at a time in both directions. Listen carefully. Do the notes get higher in one direction and lower in the other? Which note is highest? ...