whats so special about distance that makes things smaller?

Answer 1

It's not distance but the tooth fairy that makes things smaller. The thing that makes the tooth fairy special is the shape and place of his frog.

Answer 2

It's called perspective. Because we have 3D vision an object far off looks smaller than the same object close up.

You can better understand perspective by standing at the edge of a straight road and looking along it's length. The road appears to become narrower further away from where you are standing.

Perspective is brought into very sharp focus when viewing a railway track as described for a road above. Do not go on the track, view it from a bridge above on a straight section.

Try this experiment. Place the forefinger of your right hand on the top of your nose. Now, slowly move your finger away from your nose to arms length. During this slow movement you will notice that your finger appears smaller at arms length than when held up against your nose. Perspective.

Try this experiment. Next time you wish to cross the road [in UK] look to your right. If you see a vehicle approaching in your direction from the right, look directly at it, then at the opposite side of the road. Because you have 3D vision, your brain will automatically judge whether or not you will be able to cross the road safely before the vehicle arrives where you are standing. Perspective and the human brain's ability to judge distances [and speeds] with great accuracy.

Another aspect of perspective can also be measured in sound. This is known as the doppler effect. A police car with it's siren switched on sounds at a different pitch approaching your position to that of when it is moving away from your position. Audio perspective - the doppler effect.

Answer 3

Think of it another way.

If things further away did not appear smaller then the objects in the distance wouldn't all fit into the scene we see e.g

a mountain way off on the horizon would engulf even the 42" TV right in front of you!

Also, the size cues our brain perceives help us to understand the depth of a scene - without this, we would struggle to drive a car, catch a ball or even pick up a mug from the desk!

Answer 4

It is just geometry. We don't see objects, we see light that comes from objects. That light travels in straight lines from the object to our eyes. This can be shown by a triangle with one side being the object we are looking at and the opposite vertex our eye. If the size of the object stays the same but the distance to it increases, then the triangle gets longer and thinner, making the angle at the vertex at our eye a smaller angle. It is that angle and not the side at the object that our eyes see.

Answer 5

The apparent size of an object might be said to relate to the angle it takes up in your visual field.
If you imagine (or draw) a triangle linking your nose to the two sides of the PC screen in front of you, you will see that increasing the distance between you and the screen will always have the effect of reducing the angle. It is this effect which we interpret as the screen "reducing" in size.

For an even better explanation I recommend watching Father Ted - The episode where Ted and Dougal go on a caravan holiday. Classic AND informative!! ;>

Answer 6

Our eyes view things in terms of perspecvtive and the perspective compares nearer objects to those further away so distant objects appear smaller
We know they arenot smaller
for example when you view a car from aplane window its about 1cm in length and this is because we are at the altitude we are at
our brian interprets this as a distant obhect as we kow that a car is not in reality that small

Answer 7

The key word is smaller.

It looks smaller in comparison to other objects because the light from the source has a longer distance to travel before it reaches. by the time it reaches you lot of it has changed into heat.

Answer 8

Our eyes are round and objects only take up a number of degrees of a circle. As objects move back, they take up fewer degrees. This causes them to appear smaller.

Answer 9

Because we view things in perspective projection, objects that are farther away appear smaller than the same object when it is closer.