A couple nights ago, a major hurricane (Hurricane Kylie; she's been around for about three years now) blew through Sodor, destroying all of the town's rail lines--the Thomas the Tank Engine railway system was going to be out of commission until time could be secured for a "from the ground up" rebuilding. I finally found the time yesterday, after Hurricane Kylie was asleep for the night, to tackle the project.
As with any good rebuilding project, this one started with more destruction (tearing down the remaining track) and organization (sorting the track pieces by size and shape). It was while sorting that I noticed I had some magical pieces of track. I had placed two curved segments side-by-side, and noticed that they were different lengths:
The magic bit was that the track segments' lengths changed if I simply moved the pieces around, as you can see in this movie. Notice that when the top piece is moved to the bottom, it magically lengthens, and then shortens again when returned to its original position. I found this quite astonishing, and so set out to investigate further...
OK, yes, I know--it's an optical illusion. The above intro was written very much tongue-in-cheek, just to have some fun with it. But really, I found this to be one of the more powerful optical illusions I've seen recently--my eyes really have a tough time believing both pieces are the same length. But they are, as you can see in this movie--stacked one on top of the other, there's no doubt that the track pieces are identical in length.
Why it works
First, the illusion may not work for everyone--some folks I showed the picture to immediately said "oh, yea, they're the same size," while the majority were convinced that the top piece was shorter. Only when I showed them the "stacking" movie did they believe the pieces were identical. I'm not sure why some eyes are fooled and some are not, but mine definitely fall in the 'fooled' camp.
I'm also no scientist, but I think this works because of the left alignment of the two track pieces creates a visual straight line for the eye, while the right hand edges do not line up (and they're angled in the opposite direction). But if you draw two parallel lines, lined up with each edge of the track pieces, you can see that they are, indeed, the same length:
If anyone has a more technically-correct explanation for why this fools my eyes so well, I'd love to read it!
You're right, that's a very strong illusion. That movie illustrates it quite well!
Btw, your comment field tabbing order really threw me off. :)
I have to try this trick on my little cousins.
Cool, this takes me back!
I was a little too old when these train sets first came out (they're the wooden trains with the magnetic couplings, right?)
But my cousin had them as a toddler, and I (being about 5 or 6 years old) used to be fascinated by this very optical illusion (and the fact that putting the trains the wrong way round made the magnets repel). I can even clearly remember my uncle doing pretty much exactly what's in your movie to prove to me that they were the same.
I think that's one of the amazing things about kids... they'll learn something from anything... and that something will probably not be what you'd expect.
This is a standard illusion in many basic magic kits. It works better if you uniquely color the two arcs so that they are distinguishable, and then grunt and groan as you 'stretch" the track that is about to grow...
(that spam blocker question is real annoying)
Yes, I know it's annoying. But it's the least annoying solution I could come up with, short of requiring accounts. (If you do register, the question goes away).
Even *with* that in place, I still get about 40 to 50 spam comments captured per *week* by SpamKarma2. Without the question, that number was running about 200 to 300 a week. Ugh.
-rob.
You might enjoy this site:
http://www.bscandm.com/trains/
which I found very useful for track-making info.
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