Awesome Illusions

Another illusion involving cigarettes. You already know what the twist is – both sticks are actually the same size. But this time there’s no magician playing a trick, just your own confused brain.

Hard drives, cassette tapes and credit cards store information using magnets, so why shouldn’t calculators? If you are to believe this illusion by Youtuber Brusspup, they do already.

Yes, we’ve all see the old cups-and-ball trick a million times before, but in this particular case we’ll make an exception and watch it again. We assure you this does not end the way you’d expect.

These guys are pretty avid salespeople, but they could honestly do these tricks in complete silence and we would still want to get our hands on our own hovering My Mystery UFO spacecrafts.

We were hoping for maybe a new clip of Coach McGuirk, but this is just as good. Watch, listen, and learn to see what we mean. You brain may just come unhinged after you watch this.

We know this is a basic optical illusion, but seeing it brought to life in 3-dimensions by brusspup still makes our heads hurt trying to figure out why our eyeballs see two different shades of grey.

These ordinary women are turned into horrible, disfigured mutants thanks to a visual illusion discovered by a team of researchers, and termed the “Flashed Face Distortion Effect.”

No man, don’t do it! Oh wait. Photographer Erik Johansson set up this very convincing perspective illusion at Sergels torg in Sweden. Watch the making of video and more reactions here.

By making good use of perspective and clever woodworking, mcwolles has managed to create a real life version of the granddaddy of troll physics, M.C. Escher’s famous Waterfall.

We stared at this clip until our eyeballs bled, but still have no idea how magician Akira Fujii managed to pull off this close-up illusion with a couple of cigarettes in his hands.

Warning: May cause dizziness or headaches. These pictures were made by Professor Akiyoshi Kitaoka of Ritsumeikan University so that parts appear to move even though they are only static images.

Play the video and watch as the cube dances before your eyes, hovering over the cardboard. Keep watching to see how the trick is made. What we can’t figure out are the floating hands.

Play tricks with your eyes in these animated optical illusions from brusspup, who created them with Photoshop and Lightwave 3D. Hang in there for Pac-Man’s grand entrance. (Thanks Jansen!)

Zach Weiner, creator of webcomic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (NSFW), created a book of optical illusions, in which the illusions are illusions because they’re not really illusions.

Here’s the mindbending winner of the Best Visual Illusion Contest 2010. Wooden balls roll up the slopes as if they are magnetic, but really are rolling down, due to oppositely perceived orientations.

It might look like these people are all walking in this pool with their clothes on. But it’s an illusion, created by sandwiching water between two acrylic panels, and visitors walk under the liquid ceiling.