Nothing seems what it is…
Singapore, 14th February 2014
This is normally what you hear from a magician who can lead you into a world of make believe. It is really interesting to see how what we see is not always what we think we see. The eye has only limited capacity to discern differences and changes, specifically our peripheral vision and our ability to see movements. When we fix a certain point ahead of us we can see colour through our cones, we can see shapes and forms through our rods. But the interesting thing is that as you keep fixed to the point ahead and you would move the coloured object you are looking at slowly outside to the perimeter of your vision, after a while you will not see certain colours anymore; however if that object would be blinking or flashing you would still see the movement but could not tell the colour. It appears that certain colours disappear quicker than others.
And so the eye plays many tricks on our eye, very much influenced by our mind I have to say. You know how you can look for something and even if in front of your nose you don’t see it? How we can see parallel drawn lines under certain angles as converging…there are many optical illusions around like that. This just to say that what we see is not always what it is…Happy Valentine’s Day!
Light Watch 5-23: The power of illusion. When our brain works normally all seems neat and well. In the image below, if your eyes follow the movement of the rotating pink dots, the dots remain just the one colour pink. However if you stare st the black + in the centre, the dots turn green. Now concentrate on the black + in the centre of the picture; after a short period all the pink dots slowly disappear and you will see only a single green dot rotating…we don’t always see what we think we see… 🙂
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