Optical Illusions and Visual Phenomena. Friday Illusion: Mysterious material escapes from box. Sandrine Ceurstemont, editor, New Scientist TV A ring trapped in a box seems determined to escape in this latest illusion by psychophysiologist Marcel de Heer. To create the brain trick, he created a virtual material with unique properties. The exterior surface is transparent and the interior is lined with a red and yellow pattern. "The material is similar to a one-way mirror," says de Heer. As the box turns, the ring's behaviour starts to get unusual. De Heer isn't exactly sure why we experience the effect, although it's a variation of the hollow mask illusion.
Were you able to see this illusion? If you enjoyed this illusion, check out some other related brain tricks like this house that seems to collapse and a stingray that can appear to move in three different ways. StumbleUpon. A Party Trick! Explain that just as a glass prism splits up the different colours of white light, when different coloured light passes through glass, it is also affected to an extent that depends on its colour.
Write the words CARBON DIOXIDE on a piece of paper, CARBON in red and DIOXIDE in blue. Put the paper close behind the stem of a wine glass, and look at the words through the stem. The red letters turn upside down, but the blue ones don't. So is the glass affecting the red light more than the blue? You weren't fooled, were you? This has nothing to do with the different colours of the words, or of red light being bent more or less than blue light. The stem of the wine glass turns both words upside down, but because DIOXIDE is symmetrical about a horizontal line, you don't notice that it is upside down - it looks just the same either way.