Elevator Floor Illusion

Going into this elevator would certainly makes one nervous. A sign at the entrance cautions the people that goes in about work in progress. A more detailed look shows that the floor has been painted with an illusion that there is no floor.

Shadow Illusion

Partners in both life and art, Tim Noble (1966) and Sue Webster (1967) explore the toxic influences of consumer culture through new modes of portraiture. Turning garbage into complex and visually arresting sculptural installations, Noble and Webster exploit, manipulate and transform base materials, often using self-portraiture to undermine the "celebrated" authorship of the artist. This artwork is called "Dirty White Trash", Six months' worth of the artists' rubbish

Triple Sunrise Illusion

This is a natural illusion. On this day, the Sun rised due east at the Equinox, a geocentric astronomical event that occurs twice a year. What we see here is a set of ice halos, recorded on a cold winter morning near Green Bay,Wisconsin, USA. Produced by sunlight shining through common atmospheric ice crystals with hexagonal cross-sections, such halos can actually be seen more often than rainbows. The remarkable sunrise picture captures a beautiful assortment of the types most frequently seen, including a sun pillar (center) just above the rising Sun surrounded by a 22 degree halo arc. Completing a triple sunrise illusion, sundogs appear at the far left and far right edges of the 22 degree arc. An upper tangent arc is also just visible at the very top of the view.

Body illusions

Try these astounding experiments to trick your body and brain. Vilaynur Ramachandran, the world-renowned neurologist, has used these experiments to investigate phantom limb pain. The Pinocchio experiment with body image Find 2 willing (and good) friends Sit on a chair blind-folded, and ask your friend (let’s call her Sam) to sit on a chair in front of you, with her back to you. Ask your other friend to take your right hand and put it on Sam’s nose Tap and stroke her nose in a gentle random manner, making exactly identical movements with your other hand, on your own nose. Continue this for 60 seconds. About 50% of people will have the extremely odd sensation that their nose is 3 feet long, or somehow their nose is elsewhere! Body image and a rubber arm You will need 1 friend 1 fairly realistic rubber hand or arm Put one of your arms behind a screen or box on the table, so you can’t see it. Put the rubber arm on the table in a position that looks like it’s your arm. Look at this hand Now get your friend to stroke both your real hand, and the fake hand. They must stroke both identically, with the same timing and at the same part of your hand. You’ll have the strange sensation the rubber hand actually belongs to you. Before you begin, ask your friend after a minute or so of starting the experiment to (without warning) hit the rubber hand very hard – what do you do?

Optical illusions - Café wall

The café wall illusion is an optical illusion, first described by Richard Gregory in 1973. According to Gregory, this effect was first observed by a member of his laboratory, Steve Simpson, in the tiles of the wall of a café at the bottom of St Michael's Hill, Bristol.

This optical illusion makes the parallel straight horizontal lines appear to be bent.

To construct the illusion, alternating light and dark "bricks" are laid in staggered rows. It is essential for the illusion that each "brick" is surrounded by a layer of "mortar" (the grey in the image). This should ideally be of a colour in between the dark and light colour of the "bricks".

Optical illusions - Impossible triangle

This optical illusion is taking advantage of the 3D techniques of perspective angles and shading to create this impossible triangle. Lines are added to the corners where they do not belong which confuses you. The added shading helps you track the surface as intended. Notice the use of different shades at each corner which help make this a believable, impossible form.

Through this 3D optical illusion example we see the possibilities of making semi-realistic images of 3D objects that couldn't possibly be made using right angles.

Scintillating grid illusion

The scintillating grid illusion is an optical illusion, discovered by E. Lingelbach in 1994, that is usually considered a variation of the Hermann grid illusion.

It is constructed by superimposing white discs on the intersections of orthogonal gray bars on a black background. Dark dots seem to appear and disappear rapidly at random intersections, hence the label “scintillating”. When a person keeps his or her eyes directly on a single intersection, the dark dot does not appear. The dark dots disappear if one is too close to or too far from the image.