American Flag Optical Illusion

I was wandering around the web looking for a way to share this site with more people and came across the American Flag League. This is a blog alliance that the only requirement to get on the list is to have an American Flag on your site. So I thought it would be a good time for this optical Illusion.

This is the first after image optical illusion that I have placed on this blog so here are some instructions. Stare at the red dot in the center of the flag image for 30-60 seconds then look at the center of the white spot below or any white surface in the area.

Why did you see a red, white and blue American flag? Those colors are the negative of the above black, blue and yellow image. The negative is what is left after you stop staring at the image. If you were to take the above image and open it in MS Photo Editor and select negative from the effects menu you would have a nice bright American flag.

Here is the current list of American Flag League members.

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Pacman Optical Illusion

This is an amazing optical illusion.

I found this illusion on several sites on the internet. One semi-popular link farm spent 6 pages of comments discussing this optical illusion. Many were confused about what this optical illusion was all about so let's start off with the following. (If all goes well you might see something like the small image to the right).

1. The below image is an animated gif file.
2. The image is composed of 12 frames, each frame has 11 purple dots on a gray background.
3. These frames are designed so it looks as if one dot is removed at a time progressing clockwise.
4. There is no green dot in this image at all.
5. There is no green dot in this image at all.
6. There is no green dot in this image at all.
   

Stare at the center cross, you will notice a green dot start going around the circle. As you continue to stare the green dot will appear to consume the purple dots until all that is left is the green dot circling the cross, then the purple dots will reappear one by one until they are all visible again.

Jeremy L Hinton
Copyright 2004
Used w/permission

Simply put the reason you see the green dot is because that is the afterimage (or negative) of magenta.

For a more thorough explanation of how this optical illusion works go here.

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Cow and Fly Optical Illusion

I also found this optical illusion at Archimedes-Lab. This is one of the better illusions that require you to stare. The clarity of the picture after you follow the instructions below is amazing. Try it.

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The Moving Fish

First let me state that the spiral is animated and moving by design. The spiral is not an optical illusion. That said let's see how we can transfer the animation from the moving spiral to the fish scene. Focus on the spiral center exclusively for at least 60 seconds, then shift your focus to the fish. It's amazing how the fish actually float in the ocean currents.

Update: I now know that this is Jerry Andrus' Tri-Zonal Space Warper. The original instructions were "Stare at the center of the spiral for about a minute. Then look at the back of your hand.It will appear to be twitching and moving."

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