Science Fun Facts

While we were driving to my wife's parents house last night she make a comment about the moon looking huge on the horizon... And then naturally asked why it was like that. A quick google search gave a lot of interesting information from this link (http://earthsky.org/space/video-the-moon-illusion) talking about how things appear larger when the brain can compare it to other objects, unlike when it's way up in the sky and the only thing you can compare it to is the vastness of nothing up there.

My favorite takeaway from the video is that of the Ebbinghaus Illusion.



What's wild about this image, is that the orange circles are identical in size, however I swear the one with the smaller circles is larger.

The Ebbinghaus illusion or Titchener circles is an optical illusion of relative size perception. Named for its discoverer, the German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909), the illusion was popularized in the English-speaking world by Edward B. Titchener in a 1901 textbook of experimental psychology, hence its alternative name "Titchener circles".[1] In the best-known version of the illusion, two circles of identical size are placed near to each other, and one is surrounded by large circles while the other is surrounded by small circles. As a result of the juxtaposition of circles, the central circle surrounded by large circles appears smaller than the central circle surrounded by small circles.

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Too cool. Anyways, I thought it'd be fun to have a thread where an interesting scientific fact could be shared, as I enjoyed learning about the perception of the moon last night.

That's awesome. Thanks Canadan the Science Guy!

Dan Dan the Science Man.

Cool thread.


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That is very cool Dan and I agree with you about the image on the right. I will be researching this and trying to find a way to make the hole look larger on those pesky ten footers. :angel:

JM

Johnny mojo said:

That is very cool Dan and I agree with you about the image on the right. I will be researching this and trying to find a way to make the hole look larger on those pesky ten footers. :angel:

JM

Click to expand...

Crazy, right? Check this one out too. Middle dot doesn't change in size.

Ummm, oh wow....... I need a drink.

JM

That is hypnotizing Dan.

Here is my contribution to the science fun facts thread from the world of psychology. Ever deal with someone who believes they are smarter then everyone yet when you do the research you realize they know absolutley knothing? That person likely suffers from the Dunning-Kruger effect. A nobel prize was awarded for the analysis.

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias wherein relatively unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability to be much higher than is accurate. Dunning and Kruger attributed this bias to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their own ineptitude and evaluate their own ability accurately. Their research also suggests corollaries: highly skilled individuals may underestimate their relative competence, they may erroneously assume that tasks which are easy for them are also easy for others, and they may incorrectly suppose that their competence in a particular field extends to other fields in which they are less competent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect

Dan you should watch Brain Games.