Perpetual Collisions

Arthur Shapiro & Emily Knight

Bucknell University, USA
This movie requires Flash Player 9

In the perpetual collisions illusion, the pink and the yellow columns seem always to be headed towards (or away from) each other, but they never meet (and they never grow further apart). Actually, the colored fields are completely stationary; an appearance of motion is generated by the spinning black and white diamonds located alongside the columns. Click on the button to add diagonal bars and remove the edges from opposing diamonds. Notice that the information at the edges makes the colored fields move diagonally, yet when the bars are not there and all the edges are visible, the fields move horizontally.

Read more about the illusion and possible explanations

Facebooktwittermail
adminPerpetual Collisions