Awesome Illusions

Have you ever noticed how when a bicycle wheel rolls along the ground that its top spokes appear to be much more blurred than the bottom ones? Michael of DONG explains the physical and optical properties that bring this effect to life.

Professional makeup artist Luca Luce has an ongoing series of amazing illusions that play with the dimensions, texture and shape of his head. The illusions probably work only from a very narrow angle, but they’re still messing with our heads.

Latheman’s crazy machines made what he calls the “impossible screw.” If you hold it sideways, it will turn only clockwise. It doesn’t matter if you flip it. The only way to get it to turn both ways is to hold it upright. It’s a fun trinket that you can replicate with a hacksaw and a file.

Take a look at the video, and you’ll swear that these balls are spinning in a circular orbit. But look more closely, and you’ll see that each ball is moving along a perfectly straight path. The mechanical model is based on a design by 16th century Italian poymath Girolamo Cardano.

Ellusionist took the technology from its wrist-mounted flash gun and incorporated it into a marker pen. The Pyro Fire Shooter Pen looks like a Sharpie and actually writes, but press its covert button for 3 seconds, and it will ignite and shoot flash paper over 10 ft.

A computer keyboard and mouse pointer take turns manipulating real-world objects, clothespins take flight, and nothing else is quite what it seems in animator Tomin’s playful, cgi-augmented short film.

Magician Eric Chien won the 2018 FISM Close Up Grand Prize with this amazing series of tricks. He uses a ribbon and two rectangles to transform playing cards (and his vest), swapping their colors, slicing and repairing and ultimately turning the cards into coins.

What you’re looking at is mathematician Kokichi Sugihara’s “Triply Ambiguous Object, ” a seemingly three-dimensional object that messes with minds by providing three completely different interpretations depending on the angle you view it from.

An amusing clip from the Netflix series Magic for Humans in which magician Justin Willman uses a mix of illusion and collusion with the audience to convice two subjects that they are now invisible. Lots of commenters think the marks were actors, but we’re not so cynical.

AsapScience presents a handful of illusions for our ears – actually, the part of our brain that processes sound. These illusions often fool us into hearing sounds that don’t exist, or hearing something else aside from what’s actually there.

Maker of things Izzy Swan shows off a building technique that makes it look like layers of wood have been woven together into a form that should be impossible to pull off. We won’t give away the trick, but it takes a whole lot of work to pull off the illusion.

Twenty-five-year-old magician and illusionist Riana Graharani’s tricks probably won’t fool Penn and Teller. But she still managed to win Asia’s Got Talent 2017 by augmenting her craft with just the right amount of disturbing presentation and acting.

Business Insider UK shows off some the art of Patrick Hughes. In his “Reverspective” paintings, sections of the canvas project outwards making closer objects seem further away, and further objects seem closer. More trippy business here.

Anesis’ Rubika Bookcase can showcase even the plainest objects. Its overall shape, the shape of its compartments, and its color scheme make it look like it’s popping out of your wall like a giant Rubik’s Cube. Available in different colorways.

In-camera effects trickster Eran Amir did his best to make it look like everything in this video was shot in slow motion, when in fact it was all recorded and plays back in real time. It’s not perfect, but it’s still a solid effort.

Scott Jarvie’s handmade rugs have an incredibly simple yet brilliant pattern. When viewed at an angle, the Void Rug looks like a literal black hole on the floor. It’s available as a circular or a rectangular rug.