In baseball, a good curveball can turn a hitter's legs to jelly, traveling on a devastating arc that causes him to wave his bat awkwardly at where the baseball used to be. In science, a good curveball can tell researchers a lot about the differences between what a person sees when an object is viewed via the eye's narrow band of central (or foveal) vision, compared with what the object looks like when spotted through one's peripheral vision.
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(YouTube link) The structure of your individual brain has a lot to do with how you perceive optical illusions. Researchers at University College London asked subjects how they perceived illusions of size such as the one used in this... Read Post
Peter Bristol's "Cut Chair" is an optical illusion sculpture that uses a hidden steel plate beneath the unsevered leg to provide a stable base for a seemingly sawn-through chair. Cut Chair (via Neatorama)... Read Post
(Credit: iStockphoto/Barry Howell) Curveballs curve and fastballs go really fast, but new research suggests that no pitcher can make a curveball "break" or a fastball "rise." Led by Arthur Shapiro of American University and Zhong-Li... Read Post