By Vurdlak on June 23, 2010, with 71 Comments
How Many Pencils Are There?
What I have prepared for you today is an old trick that plays with your brains. Most recent example we posted was when you had to count the dogs in an infinite flowing animation. Remember that? I think all of this has developed out from the Impossible Pillars illusion, one we had the chance to post at the very beginning of this site. What you have to do today, is count the pencils. That’s it, nothing special – or is it? Just how many pencils are there in this image? Can you spot where one pencil ends, and the other one starts? Think of an impossible flow-meter, if this looks to problematic…
This trick reminded me of an old story. Apparently, Americans have spent millions of dollars in search for a pen that would work in zero-gravity, on their space expeditions. It took plenty of time and resources for NASA to solve this problem. Russians, on the other hand, simply brought a pencil when they went to space. There you have it – who knows if this actually happened. Would be darn funyy if it were true. Hope we have some NASA employees among us to explain this further!
By the way, we have heavily surpassed the 3,000 subscribers mark on our Facebook fan-group, and our counter is growing fast with each minute. Glad to see so many of you invited your families and friends to join our group! I promise to keep it fresh with stuff never before seen on this site. My thanks goes to all of you who joined…
(31 votes)
200. The rest are directly behind these, so you can’t see them in the photo… :p
0
There are no pencils , they are candles . I hope.
Hee hee , just noticed 6 , bottom , seven on top .
theres OVER 9000!!!!!!!
i count 13 half pencils ;P
The zero-gravity pen story is at least partly true. Not sure about the millions in research part, but they told us that story when I was at spacecamp in Huntsville. I’m a huge geek :P
I prefer pens.
i count 13 half pencils ;P
but then i decide to buy some brains and i count none, since apparently the new brain wuz malfunctioning and i lost the ability to count.
kinda lame
None……
i only see 6. and then a half on on the left…so 6 and a half
OK PEOPLE you should learn to read the description
Look at the top of the 1st pencil
and then slowly follow the pencil down
………..
See it?
Define Pencil.
ohk there r none because if u look closely, the top & the bottom arent even connected
I see a giant Giga pecil with seven drawing ends and six erasers… As… one just flows into the other.. THEY ARE ALL COMBINED TOGETHER TO CREATE THE ULTIMATE (and somewhat useless) PENCIL!!!
I have to say no pencils at all. But, there are seven pencil points and six erasers.
Erasers are in between the lead, so it’s either none or 13.
Lol, ncie comments. Anyways i see 13 jalf pencivls oo, thought it is impossible to define the boundaries of the pencils. NIce job.
How many are there by the way?
I counted 6 and 7
You must first realize the truth… there is no pencil.
I appreciate this image and the other images that are displayed daily. I do not appreciate the facebook propaganda attached to this optical illusion. People who don’t use facebook are people too. Enough with the stereotype.
For me it’s either 13 halves, or none because without and eraser or tip, is it really a pencil? :D
There are seven. counting from left to right the last one is on a curve so the bottom is hidden
hey guys der r only 6 pencils……………m sure :D:D
07 pencils
I also heard the same space pen story, and I actualy have one of those space pens that works in zero gravity, not that I have had the chance to test it :(
Whilst it is true, pencils do work in zero gravity, they also give off dust when you write and if they break, bigger bits of graphite will then start floating around the space craft and as for sharpening them again, well lets say I make a mess doing that never mind doing it in zero gravity. All the pencil mess then gets into filters and equipment.
So, perhaps not such a silly idea spending that much money.
As for the illusion, yes, a classic pillers 6 or is it 7 things in the picture. Might look better if they where childrens colouring penciles that gradually went through the rainbow from left to right – I think the illusion would probably still work.
I once saw a space pen and the owner told me the same story. And I think there was one in “Seinfeld” as well. So this pen seems to exist. But a pen isn’t a pencil and it might be the case that the NASA had the idea for the pencil as well but simply wanted to develop a pen, too. Just my two cents.
13 half pencils…. 7 halves on top and 6 halves at the bottom.
my eyes, it burns! DX
I heard the NASA story before too, but was told it is an urban myth.
Apparently if you used a pencil in zero gravity, the graphite dust it creates, and especially any tips which break off, risks getting into and damaging spacecraft electronics and instrumentation.
there are no pencils it is just a drawing
why would there be pencils stuck on you computer screen?
Umm…3?
1!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
i count 0 pencils they are all pens cleverly disguised as pencils
7 because that’s how many tips/erasers there are…
7 pencils with their bottom half cut off, and 6 pencils with their top half cut off. :-D
Reminds me of the elephant legs illusion. :-P
There were more pencils. …Many more pencils. I’m not sure if were eaten, ground up or carried off by groups of tiny black hoels fm. LHC –
lilJoeyRoo
I see seven points, and six erasers, they blend together in the middle.
6. only up side of pencil counts. and i have smiliar illusion, but with elephant legs.
none actully it doesnt show any full pencil
great illusion
There. are. _four_ lights.
6 pencil
The NASA pen story is partly true, the americans did spend millions on a zero gravity pen, but pencils could not be used as some of the other comments have explained. But a normal pen would work in zero gravity fine, so the money was wasted lol
i see 0 of em cuz of the when i look the sharped pencil and look down there a earaser but little bit lefty
7 above..6 in bottom
i got 13
its easy 7 look how many gold part they are
umm…14?
SEVEN! Think so.
If You Scroll Up And Down It Looks cool
>_<
7
none
6 bottom 7 top
6. if you count by the top its 7, but dont do that, count by the bottom. the 7th one is just a top, not a bottom too.
ummmm none of them are complete none of the tops meet the bottoms and vice versa
actually there are 13 half pencils none of them are fully there
None. There’s a bunch of half pencils, but not a single whole one :)
Well. It depends on how you perceive the problem
At first glance 6 full pebncils dig a little
Deeper there are 7 not fully though
And then if you concentrate and stare
At it for a min or so you start to second guess
Yourself so in conclusion there is no
Right answer
lol
there arent any entire pencils, merely fading lines with 6 earasors and seven black triangles at the top
0
None…
13 i say
i put a real pencil up to the screen and the erasers don’t have lead tips and the lead tips don’t have erasers, so i guess the real answer is 13; just like william from aug. 16, 2011 said.
The Russians developed pens as well. It is a myth that the Russians used pencils due to the dangerous nature of graphite dust in the Astronaut/Cosmonauts lungs and it’s conductive and particlate nature near sensitive electronic equipment in zero g. Both the U.S and Soviets used china graph pens which are waxy like crayons.
6 man
13
1
There all conected
7 but 6 on the bottom
it doesn’t take a genies