Museum of Illusions

By Child 1

On Saturday, Jan 5, Dad was home so we went to Kuala Lumpur to visit the Museum of Illusions. Though it was not very big, its two floors were packed with mind-boggling puzzles and dizzying illusions.  And now, you get the chance to be guided through some of the most interesting illusions in the museum.

What's this? An endless void of heads? Perhaps it's some cunning trick of photo editing. But no, it is in fact just a long triangle shaped tube with mirrors on all sides. Whatever you can see through the opening at the end is reflected over and over until all of eternity is filled.



And here, my head has been chopped off and put on a plate, and I am smiling as I'm about to be eaten. Or am I? No, my whole body is still in good health, but the table beneath has mirrors that reflect the wall and floors next to them. This gives the appearance that is is just my head on that plate.

This next optical illusion is due to our brain's keen sense of motion. Things in our everyday life are always moving, and so our brain can see and detect motion very well. Sometimes, it can even see motion where there is none!

Look at the picture on the right. Don't the blue dots appear to be moving? The shading on these particular dots against the bright lime background tricks your brain into seeing motion where there is none.

Another thing we see in our everyday lives, no matter where we are, is perspective. Since our world has 3 dimensions, it is important to grasp how far back something is, so our brain has ways of helping us see perspective correctly. However, your brain can sometimes mislead you...

What's happening here? How can a person possibly be that small? In fact, no one can. The three legs you can see resting on the black square are actually far in front of the rest of the chair. But because they line up from this angle, and because a chair is a regular object we are all used to seeing, our brain connects the pieces of the chair. And that makes anyone sitting on the seat appear smaller!

Huh? What's happening here? The answer is, another trick of perspective. This room is actually tilted and twisted, but viewed from this angle, our brain can line up the walls to make the room appear

normally. That makes whatever or whoever is in the left corner appear larger, and whoever is in the right corner appear smaller.

That's it for our trip to the Museum of Illusions. I hope you had fun!