20 Amazing Optical Illusions and Visual Phenomena That Will Totally Mess With Your Mind
It's all a matter of visual perspective when it comes to optical illusions that mess with your mind and evoke a 'WTF?' feeling in your brain. Forget all the fuss about that 'Blue dress - Black dress' photograph that was around a while ago on social media, you know the one, it made your brain think, 'is it white and gold--or blue and black?' Causing people to argue with their friends and wonder what the heck is wrong with their eyes.
A good example of this type of optical illusion is the static image above, it's not moving, but IT IS!
Optical illusions are a very interesting concept, especially when it comes to perspective and visual phenomena, change things around a bit and all of a sudden your brain is sending you signals that all is not right in the state of reality. It's all about pushing the boundaries on our visual perception, and its limitations.
All of a sudden you are seeing things happen that you mind has difficulty coping with and the longer you look the weirder it gets. Any optical illusion is fascinating, especially as we grasp to work out how we are being fooled. They also teach us about our visual perception, and its limitations, exposing a malfunction of the visual system that makes our brain fill in the gaps and cause these optical illusions. But how does it all work?
How Do Optical Illusions Work?
Basically, an optical illusion occurs when our minds try to find the easiest way to look at things. At a first glance, we try to relate the image with the most basic and close interpretation of it, and it's only after a few seconds do we realize that separate details and behavior patterns of the image don’t even make sense.
The end result (the 'optical illusion') exposes a malfunction of the visual system as the information gathered by the eye is processed by the brain, creating a perception that in reality, does not match the true image.
Optical illusions are often classified into categories including the physical and the cognitive or perceptual, and contrasted with optical hallucinations. Check out some mind blowing examples below.
20 Optical Illusions To Mess With Your Mind
1. It's not just humans that are fooled by this witchcraft.
2. It's difficult not to get 'sucked' into this one.
3. Does the orange circle change size....or not?
4.Are these blocks moving at the same speed.....or not?
5. Your mind sees a geometric shape--your mind is wrong.
6. Watch out for those bollards!!!...........WAIT!?!
7. Are you sure that plain grey rectangle isn't gradated?
8. Even though your mind screams 'NO', this is the correct way to sit down on that chair.
9. The impossible pencil trick (this one still gets me everytime i see it)
10. Perspective is never quite what you imagined it to be, even in a normal room.
11. Are the horizontal lines parallel or do they slope?
12. The Image below is NOT moving, it's just your brain struggling.
13. Stare At The Middle For A Change In Color.
14. How is that gun coming out of the screen?.
15. Move your eyes up and the dots will look like they're rotating clockwise.
16. Look at the flashing green dot and the yellow ones will disappear.
17. This is a Penrose triangle, also known as the impossible triangle (because it is).
18. Are you seeing cats or birds?.
19. These three cars are all different sizes, right? WRONG!
20. Which way is this subway train going?
