Irregular Circles Illusion

Irene Román found this illusion, while looking for some in Google. She asked us if these two concentric circles below look irregular? “They obviously are”, some of you may say. I did as well! Well, since this is optical illusions website – they’re not! This type of visual phenomena is well known to me. I have shared over a dozen of similar variations in the past, haven’t I? But this one probably shares the strongest effect! When I look at it up close, I understand that they are regular, but still have trouble seeing them regular as a whole. Nifty, ayeh? I have linked some words in this text to help you compare this illusion with some very similar from the past.

26 Replies to “Irregular Circles Illusion”

    1. the inner rings of the circles are perfect circles…the stripes are just not so perfect…which gives it the illusion of “wavy circles”

  1. okay if you block out the whole striped-ness of the string, and lookat it as a whole then it looks like a real circle, the way the string is black and white twisted is what tips off our brain to follow either the black or the white, mostly the black though and that shape created by the black parts isnt a circle and therefore the circles look irregular.did that make sense?
    amy

  2. you know, if you cross your eyes, wiggle your ears and stick a pencil up your nose, they almost look regular.

  3. Twisting my head, block out the striped-ness… none of it works for me I see to square looking things no matter how hard I try to make it in my brain a perfect circle…

    Very Good!!!
    I agree author it is probably one of the best examples of this type of illusion

  4. what actually causes it is the fact that the stripes are not uniform, if you look at the left and right of the inner circle, u can see to black stripes that go along the rope instead of from inside to outside, and the same with the outer circle, the top and bottom have the same black line instead of going inside to outside the rope it goes straight along, creating the illusion on straight lines which gives us the illusion of irregular circles.

  5. Hey ,
    love your site. :)
    type in thing enterprises in google and you should find some cool illusions to post up

  6. I like it:)! its good ;)

    knew that they were actual circles but, wanted to have a test and put them into paint and drew 2 circles on them :D

  7. this is a good illusion. Print this out (including the reference, of course). And place a celluloid or transparent sheet on top and draw out the actual regular circle. you can then show it to people to prove that it is actually a regular circle.

  8. O.o this may sound weird, but if you cover part of the outer circle, you cn see the inner circle straighten out, so tht it is concentric o.o

  9. When you look at the INSIDE of the circles, you see that they are regular. I'M ONLY 11 AND IT DIDN'T TAKE ME LONG TO FIGURE THAT OUT. omg… :D

    ^—-^
    >^^<
    U U

  10. if you only stare at the center of the smaller circle and use your peripheral vision, then you can tell that they are regular circles.

  11. hey would you please do the morally right thing and spread the truth about September 11th 2001 (NYC 9/11) and July 7th 2005 (LDN 7/7) far and wide…. George bush LIAR

  12. My question is . . . how are these circles “irregular”?

    They look ok to me. ( Then again, my glasses may need to change ).

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