Optical Illusion Essay, Research Paper

What you see is not always what you get. We learn to perceive or understand what we’re looking at, and we get used to how things are supposed to be. Sometimes our brains get the clues all wrong. Other times, our brains fill in the missing pieces. Our brains cause optical illusions in both ways.

The optical illusion you see the most is probably television. TV doesn’t really move. Television is really lots of still pictures that are shown to us very quickly. Our brain puts the images together because it has learned to expect the movement, and it cannot look at that many still pictures one right after another that quickly so it makes it a whole movement. Another very common optical illusion is the computer monitor. When you look at a computer monitor you see many different colors. That too is an optical illusion. There are only three different colors that merge in together to make all of the colors that we see. The three colors are red, blue, and green. The only way to see the colors is by looking really close at the screen.

For an illusion to work it is all in the eye. First light enters the eye through the cornea. From the cornea it goes to the pupil. The amount of light passing through is made normal and fixed by the iris, the colored part of your eye. Next, it passes through a fluid. This fluid is what keeps the eye round. It is called the viterous humor. Then, it reaches the retina where it appears like an inverted picture. The optic nerve then sends the picture to the brain and you see what you are looking at however the brain can take this picture and add things to make the picture something that you have seen or are accustomed to seeing.

Illusions also have to deal with the way that people think. Many people think more actively with the left side of their brain while others think more actively with the right side of their brain. If you think more actively with the right side then you will see a picture. That is because the right side of your brain controls mostly creativity. If you think more actively with the left side of your brain you will most likely be seeing text. That is because the left side of your brain controls text.

Another very interesting fact about illusions is that it depends on the the person that is seeing the illusion. If the person has a great imagination then they will see the object faster and they might also see something different from any other person. As Mark Twain said “You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”There are many people that have worked with illusions. One person that became famous by working with illusions is Maurits Cornelis Escher. Many people call him M.C. Esher. M.C. Esher was born June 17th, 1898 in Holland and he died in 1972. M.C. Esher was a graphic artist. M.C. Esher also worked making tessellations. Tessellations are pictures that fit in with each other to make a picture.

As you can see your brain can trick you. The main reasons are because the brain fills in what it expects to be there. The second major reason is because your brain just gets the messages all wrong. Next time that something looks a bit tricky it probably is an illusion. Perhaps you too can go by the quote, “It’s not an optical illusions, it just looks that way.”

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