how do you see the world - optical illusions

Illusions: Optical, Verbal, and Written

Compiled by

William M Tweedie

For facilitators of learning to help their students understand how we are each capable of seeing the world from unique and valid perspectives

that need to be respected and valued by others.

© 2014 Kenmac Educan International & William M Tweedie

The following pages contain 2 or 3 Illusions on each. They can be presented as overhead or computer projections or they can be printed as needed for your class. They can be divided into sections and given to groups in your class who may then present them to the whole class after a set period of time to examine and ‘solve’ the illusion (10 - 15 minutes is recommended). Do not expect everybody to see all the illusions readily. Predominantly visual-spatial and logical-mathematical learners seem to be able to ‘flip’ the illusions faster than others. In time everyone can do it. Notice how your students will try to explain the illusion to their fellow students who don’t see it as quickly.

Is the blue side in the front or back of the cube?

It’s a spiral, right?

How many legs does this elephant have?

Do you see an Eskimo or a Native American?

Is it a face or the word: liar?

Look carefully, they are the same; don't let your eyes deceive you!

How many full cubes can you count here?

What do you see: Faces or Vases?

Are the stairs headed up or down?

Is the following object physically possible?

Which vertical line is longer?

How many prongs does this fork have?

What do you see?

Rectangles, diamonds or both?

At first glance, this image consists of black splotches. But look closer. It actually spells a word.

This one will make you dizzy. Try focusing on just the center circle while moving your head.

What do you see?

Look at the red lines; do they appear to be wavy?

Do you see anything in this black & white image?

Read the following passage:

Which line connects to line C? A or B?Line B actually connects, but it’s a close call!

Which black rectangle is bigger?

Can you find the lowest step in this image?

How is this possible? It just keeps on going...

Are the circles on the inside or the outside of this image?

This is another one of those images that flip-flops back and forth as you stare at it!

Do you see the two shades of green below?

Which man is the tallest in the picture below?

Look at the grouping of stairs below. How can they keep climbing?

Does this one make you dizzy?

Does this one make you dizzy?

Do the horizontal lines below look straight or curved?

Does it seem to move back and forth?

Can you clearly see the word that's written down here?

Is this knot pairing of triangles physically possible?

Look at the two dimensional image below.

How is it possible for raised spots and craters to appear?

Do you see a rabbit or a duck?

Do you see a young woman or an old woman?

Is the blue line in the middle a perfect square?

It actually is, it just appears to be slightly slanted.

Do you see a donkey or a seal below?

Despite their appearance, the top lines on each of these trapezoids are the exact same size!

Stare at the black dot in the middle. You should see the outer edges of the circle fade away!

Are you looking at the inside or outside of this magazine?

What is wrong with these pillars?

Is this a small cube inside a room or a big cube with a notch taken out

Are the lines in this image a spiral? Or are they a series of perfect circles?

Do they appear to periodically change direction

Look closely at the picture, is this possible?

How many faces do you see?

Count the white dots.

Look at the square.

Are the lines of the square straight, or?

1. Five patients, all potential blood donors, are waiting in the doctor's surgery and are sitting on the bench from left to right. Can you determine the position of each patient along with their blood group, age, height and weight? Their ages are 5, 9, 30, 46 and 60. Their heights are 40, 48, 60, 65 and 74. Their weights are 40, 75, 96, 125 and 165.

The person on the far right is 37 years older than Jason, and is 60 inches tall.Jason weighs 56 pounds more than his height.Alan weighs 75 pounds and is 74 inches tall.John is type AB and weighs 56 pounds less than Jason.The person in the centre is 9 years old, is blood type AO and weighs 96 pounds.Adam, who is the first, is 65 inches tall, and weighs 100 pounds more than his height.The person, who is blood type O, is 25 years older than the person to his left.Kevin is 60 years old.The person, who is blood type A, is 55 years younger than Kevin and is not next to the person who is type AO.The person who is next to the 9 year old but not next to the person who is 65 inches tall, is blood type B, and weighs 125 pounds.

2. There are 5 houses in 5 different colours. In each house lives a person of a different nationality. The 5 owners drink a certain type of beverage, smoke a certain brand of cigar, and keep a certain pet. Using the clues below can you determine who owns the fish?The Brit lives in a red house.The Swede keeps dogs as pets.The Dane drinks tea.The green house is on the immediate left of the white house.The green house owner drinks coffee.The person who smokes Pall Mall rears birds.The owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhill.The man living in the house right in the middle drinks milk.The Norwegian lives in the first house.The man who smokes Blend lives next door to the one who keeps cats.he man who keeps horses lives next door to the man who smokes Dunhill.The owner who smokes Blue Master drinks beer.The German smokes Prince.The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.The man who smokes Blend has a neighbour who drinks water.

This puzzle is usually attributed to Einstein, who may or may not have written it.

3. The weather at the Cape of Good Hope makes it a notorious location where many ships have been lost to the sea. Philip Wood, the famous diver, has discovered four ships that sank in the same spot, one on top of each other.

With some skill, Philip was able to determine the name, captain, cargo, destination and year each ship was built. The question is, can you?

1. During his first exploration of the site, Philip determined there were four ships - the Red Rover, the ship built in 1743, the ship captained by Quigley and the ship carrying tea that was bound for North America.2. The ship that carried a cargo of saffron was built after the ship that carried a cargo of tea.3. An entry in one ship's log found at the site indicated that the ship built in 1522 was carrying a valuable cargo of gold.4. One ship was carrying botanical specimens to France. Philip determined that this was not the Royal Bride.5. The Scarlet Queen, a pirate ship, was certainly built before the nineteenth century but not as early as the sixteenth. The captain of this ship was the famous rogue Clubfoot.6. The Wanderer was built after the Royal Bride. The Royal Bride's cargo was not tea and the Royal Bride was not travelling to the South Seas.7. Captain Bolton's ship was built before Clubfoot's and before The Royal Bride.

Ships: Red Rover, Royal Bride, Scarlet Queen, WandererYear Built: 1522, 1688, 1743, 1817Captain: Bolton, Clubfoot, Quigley, VickersCargo: Gold, Saffron, Specimens, TeaDestination: England, France, North America, South Seas

4. The four clowns in this puzzle all competed for the much-prized 'Clown of the Year' award recently. There were 30 clowns in total who entered the competition and each had to make the judges laugh. From the clues below, can you work out each clown's name, the town he or she came from, what place each clown was awarded and the most comical moment of each clown's routine?

1. The Budsworth clown finished one place lower than Strumpy who is not from Witfield.

2. The judges roared with laughter as one clown cycled across a tightrope, wobbled, screamed and fell head first into a pool of water. He finished two places below Boo Boo who was not from Witfield.

3. The clown who finished in 7th place lost points when her big red nose fell off during her manic routine. This involved being hit with a giant rubber mallet by her assistant who was supposed to hit her on the shoulder but unfortunately had something in his eye at the time and accidentally bashed her in the face instead.

4. Tambo was disappointed when his usually masterful custard pie antics failed to impress the judges sufficiently to secure the award. He was not the clown from Stockville whose final placing was lower than the Shrimpton clown.

Clowns: Boo Boo, Grego, Strumpy, TamboTowns: Budsworth, Shrimpton, Stockville, WitfieldPosition: 2nd, 4th, 5th, 7thRoutine: Custard Pie, Flower, Rubber Mallet, Unicycle

Answers

Name Type Age Height Weight

Adam A 5 65 165

Alan O 30 74 75

Jason AO 9 40 96

John AB 46 60 40

Kevin B 60 48 125

The German owns the fish and the table below details the full answer:

Nationality Norweg Dane Brit German Sweden

Colour: yellow blue red green white

Beverage: water tea milk coffee beer

Smokes: Dunhill Blend Pall Mall Prince Blue Master

Pet: cats horses birds fish dogs

Name Year Captain Cargo Destination

Royal Bride 1743 Vickers Saffron England

Scarlet Queen 1688 Clubfoot Tea North America

Red Rover 1522 Bolton Gold South Seas

Wanderer 1817 Quigley Specimens France

The ship built in 1522 was carrying gold (3). This is not the Scarlet Queen (5), the Wanderer (6) or the Royal Bride (7) so must have been the Red Rover. The Scarlet Queen was built in either 1688 or 1743 (5) and the Wanderer was built after the Royal Bride so the Wanderer was built in 1817 and the Royal Bride in either 1688 or 1743 so the captain of the Red Rover was Captain Bolton (7). The ship carrying tea was not the Red Rover (gold), the Royal Bride (6) or the Wanderer (2) so was the Scarlet Queen. The Scarlet Queen's destination was North America (1) and her captain was Clubfoot (5). The Scarlet Queen was not built in 1743 (1) so was built in 1688 and the Royal Bride was built in 1743. The Royal Bride was not carrying gold (Red Rover), tea (Scarlet Queen) or botanical specimens (4) so was carrying saffron and the Wanderer was carrying the specimens to France. Quigley was not the captain of the Royal Bride (1) so was the captain of the Wanderer and Vickers was the captain of the Royal Bride. The Royal Bride's destination was not the South Seas (6) so was England and the Red Rover's destination was the South Seas.

Name Clown Number Routine

Boo Boo Shrimpton 2nd Flower

Strumpy Stockville 4th Unicycle

Tambo Budsworth 5th Custard Pie

Grego Whitfield 7th Rubber Mallet

The positions that the four clowns could finish are 2nd, 4th, 5th and 7th. The Budsworth clown finished one place below Strumpy (1) so Strumpy must have been 4th and the Budsworth clown 5th. The (male) clown on the unicycle finished two places below Boo Boo (2) so must have been 7th or 4th. Since the clown who came 7th was female, the clown on the unicycle must have been 4th and is Strumpy and Boo Boo came 2nd. Tambo (male) is not the clown who came 7th (3), 2nd (Boo Boo) or 4th (Strumpy) so came 5th with his custard pie act (4) and Grego came 7th with her rubber mallet so by elimination, Boo Boo's act involved the flower. The Budsworth clown (Tambo) came 5th, neither Strumpy (1) nor Boo Boo (2) came from Whitfield so the clown from Whitfield was Grego (7th). The Shrimpton clown was placed higher than the Stockville clown (4) so came 2nd and the Stockville clown came 4th.

The Racetrack (or Dichotomy)

One can never reach the end of a racecourse, for in order to do so one would first have to reach the halfway mark, then the halfway mark of the remaining half, then the halfway mark of the final fourth, then of the final eighth, and so on ad infinitum. Since this series of fractions is infinite, one can never hope to get through the entire length of the track (at least not in a finite time).

Start ____________________1/2__________3/4_____7/8__15/16... Finnish

But things get even worse than this. Just as one cannot reach the end of the racecourse, one cannot even begin to run; for before one could reach the halfway point, one would have to reach the 1/4 mark, and before that the 1/8 mark, etc., etc. As there is no first point in this series, one can never really get started (this is known as the Reverse Dichotomy).

Arrow in flight

An arrow in flight is really at rest. For at every point in its flight, the arrow must occupy a length of space exactly equal to its own length. After all, it cannot occupy a greater length, or a lesser one. But the arrow cannot move within this length it occupies. It would need extra space in which to move, and it of course has none. So at every point in its flight, the arrow is at rest. And if it is at rest at every moment in its flight, then it follows that it is at rest during the entire flight.

A doctor and a boy were fishing. The boy was the doctor's son, but the doctor was not the boy's father. Who was the doctor?

A frog fell into a well 12 feet deep. He could jump 3 feet, but every time he jumped 3 feet, he fell back 2 feet. How many times did he have to jump to get out of the well?

A man had 12 sheep. All but 9 died. How many sheep did he have left?

A man started to town with a fox, a goose and a sack of corn. He came to a stream which he had to cross in a tiny boat. He could only take one across at a time. He could not leave the fox alone with the goose or the goose alone with the corn. How did he get them all safely over the stream?

Almost everyone needs it, asks for it, gives it, but almost nobody takes it. What is it? Here’s the missing letter: c

how do you see the world - optical illusions

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