optical illusion....science fair?

Question

i want my science fair topic to be on optical illusion...and that can tie in wit the human brain and how people look @ optical illusions... but the problem is that i cant think of a purpose and hypothesis..so can someone help me come up wit 1

Answer 1

An interesting topic would be motion blindness.

Answer 2

Here's a great one. Have you ever noticed that a full moon looks bigger on the horizen than it does overhead? It's actually a cool optical illusion, but not an obvious one. You can even do an experiment with it - go out during a full moon at sunset (moon rise), and measure the diameter an hour later until midnight (overhead) to see if it changes. You can find info on the illusion at www.badastronomy.com and www.wikipedia.org.

But if you do measure it, take pictures with a digital camera - otherwise, it is VERY easy to make mistakes with the measurements.

Answer 3

One thing you could do is a bit of trickery with mirrrors. Simply print a message which says that the mirror is impregnated with BIHECO DIOXIDE, which will invert black letters but not those in red. Make sure that you print this with the capital letters of this (non-existant) substance in red. When you put the note flat on a table with the top of the page against an upright mirror, you'll see that the words "BIHECO DIOXIDE" will look exactly the same in the mirror! How many of your visitors will realise the truth :) You can do similar things with a glass rod supported over a line of text. Reading through the glass will also invert the letters, but if you make up words out of letters that are the same upside down, you can have some fun.
It's a good example of how the brain will interpret things slightly differently because you've told people that's what will happen.

Answer 4

not sure what you mean "fair". Fair depends on what her husband's income was, I mean he's a wealthy guy, probably wouldn't miss $50M but usually in a divorce the money goes for the child. A woman gets alimony only if she had no income or job of her own and Heather does have a career of her own. But probably their tax system would take half of that, and I don't know if $25M would keep that child in the style she is accustomed to (probably had a huge house, nanny, clothes, toys, education, transportation) and I'm sure McCartney would wish his child to keep living in luxury. I'm not sure if the courts would allow Heather to revisit the court if her child needed more or not. I would think yes. I know Heather asked for more money, and got less. She wanted more security for her and her daughter.

Answer 5

I like eri's idea.. and it's an easy one.. dealing with the moon illusion. And it runs so counter to most people's perceptions that the moon is bigger when it's rising or setting. Only looks bigger when compared to earthly landmarks on the horizon. A simple ruler held at arm's length during the rising and overhead times will confirm it.

Answer 6

Optical illusions often depend on what we learn to see. For example, lines may seem to converge or diverge when they don't because we expect them to. If a person is born and raised in a jungle (etc.) he/she may not have learned to see very many straight lines and because there are no expectations, the optical illusion will not fool them.

Answer 7

A red lightbulb against a white background. When the person looks away from the light and focuses on a blank white backgound, they will see the afterimage of the light as a cerulean (blue) color. That is the simplest one that I can think of.