By Vurdlak on September 15, 2009, with 12 Comments
Open this image in full-size. Are those concentric circles, or one continuous spiral?
Let us revisit the Seemingly Bent category. We hadn’t had unique optical illusion that belongs to this section, in quite a while. To remind you once again, Seemingly Bent category consists of illusions that give you impression you are seeing slanted lines and shapes, while in fact they are perfectly straight (or mutually parallel). Most famous example to represent this category could be “Cafe Wall“, followed by both slanted square and slanted seesaw.
Now that we have repeated the matter, I can proceed explaining today’s two specimens. First one on the right is nothing new to be frank. It’s just a more recent version of “Circles or Spiral” illusion. You can open the image in full-size to see the full effect. In short: the image gives you impression you are seeing continuous spiral, while there are only 6 concentric (ones that share the same center) circles instead. The second image below is new work by Akiyoshi Kitaoka, and believe it or not – all of the lines in it (consisted of gray blocks) are placed perfectly horizontal. I’m not pretty sure why is that, and does the color combination help making the effect stronger.
(27 votes)
Are you sure about that?
I downloaded the image and put a grid on it and not all of the lines in the blocks are horizontal.
http://www.hakankoseoglu.com/grid-bifidusillusion.jpg
Although the bars made of the blocks are horizontal, the blocks are not.
Ah, you got me on the spiral. I thought it stopped being a spiral after the third ring!
On closer inspection, the grey boxes aren’t exactly straight. The rows are parallel, but each box has a slight tilt to it.
those gray blocks are placed in a way where one looks shorter then the one before in the first line and in the second line the opposite… so this gives the effect…I don’t know if the colors have anything to do with it…
its the fading/shadow effect on the blocks.
I’ve been Watching this website for a while. The circles/spiral illusion is a pretty effective one.
So trippy!
good one….the grey blocks are tilted a bit…..they are not horizontal
Illusion: Rows of blocks appear to be slanted but are not with closer inspection. gud eng sucks but anyway thats the illusion
Erm, it’s the lines that are straight/horizontal, the blocks making up that line aren’t. The description didn’t say otherwise
c’mon – you’re wanting parallel straight lines made up of parallel straight blocks to look slanted…?!? Good luck!
I like it, I also like the fact that it’s named after bacteria
Those blocks are not staright so no, it`s not really an illusion and that spiral/circle thing just hurts my eyes lol.
The description is wrong, but the illusion is still legit. ‘Hakan’ has it right – the blocks are not straight, but since they make up a horizontal line, they give the illusion that the the lines aren’t horizontal – that’s all.