today's topic solid through solid and we're gonna do it with a window and if it looks right
it's gonna look just like magic welcome to impossible science
hey everyone it's jason latimer world champion of magic coming to you with another impossible
science the show where we take an impossible topic and we see if we can bring it to life through
science now what you just saw of the ping-pong ball passing through the window that's a magic
trick but it made me think there actually is a science experiment where you can pass a solid
object through another solid object and it uses depth perception field of view and a project known
as the aims window so i'm going to show you how to make an ames window and it's going to be a lot of
fun let's get started this is the ames window designed by albert ames in 1951 this optical
illusion uses perspective art and field of view to trick your mind now you're probably wondering wait
a second what do you mean trick my mind well take a close look at this window look at the window as
it swings from one side to the other side and then back take a look at it from another perspective
it's actually rotating at 360 degrees even if i slow it down
it still looks like it's just going to sweep back and forth
so right now i'm going to break down how do you actually make an aims window and why does it work
the first thing you need to do is take the jpeg i provide you and you can expand it or just move it
onto a piece of foam core and cut it out you want to trace out the lines in black because you want
that contrast you want two different shades of the same color you want a bright one and a dark one
to give you that shading and you'll notice that since it's not a rectangle what's going on well
this is perspective art this is the idea of what it would look like on a flat drawing of
a 2d drawing to give you a three-dimensional feel so when i hold it up like this it actually looks
three-dimensional now there's a lot going on right now because with the aims window albert noticed
that your mind has been conditioned to actually see right angles kind of odd when you think
about that but think about any window you've ever seen you've seen the bright side the shaded side
you've seen this format and your mind is constantly seeking out patterns in this case
the right angle and it's taking advantage of that with perspective art if you've ever noticed that
things get larger as they get closer that has to do with what's known as field of view so let
me explain field of view has to do with how much you can see without turning or tilting your head
how big an object appears to us has to do with how much our field of view is taken up by that object
and one way to measure our field of view is by angle vertically our field of view is about 150
degrees if you look at a building from far away and you can see the entire building from top to
bottom if you calculate the angle from the line from your eye to the top of the building and the
line from your eye to the bottom of the building you will find that this angle is small compared to
the 150 degrees you have available the further the object is the smaller this angle will be
as you move closer the viewing angle of this building grows your brain interprets this larger
percentage of your field of view being taken up means that this object is either larger or it
must be closer our brain is constantly deciphering and reinforcing that a smaller viewing angle means
that this object is either physically smaller or farther away so if we draw a situation where the
viewing angle is incorrect on purpose the brain must choose what to believe this is the basis of
the aims window okay so now that we understand how to make the template and we understand the field
of view and the size of it how would you actually get it to spin well there's a lot of different
ways one if you don't happen to have a motor the low-tech way to do this would be just tie a string
from one side to the other and so once you hang it from something just twist up the cord and then
let go and as it unwinds it will rotate and the illusion will take place for me when i build stuff
i like to use a sony cuv it's like building blocks and engineering and coding all at the same time
see i wanted something that i could adjust the speeds for so i just assembled the motor with the
controller i went on the website i actually found i didn't even code it myself i said oh there's a
helicopter i'm just going to drag the helicopter code over bluetooth it to this and i'm good to go
so if you're an educator or a maker and you just like prototyping stuff super quick the cuv is
awesome how do we make it all come together to make a solid object pass through a solid object
since we know that the mind thinks that this piece will be in the front at all times we're
going to give it real dimension see we have fake illusion drawing perspective right now and i'm
going to add a ruler to this we're going to make this ruler look like it passes through these bars
so making sure that it stands tall enough so that you can see it pass through the bars
really helps this illusion you i like a ruler because it's got one side that has writing on
it and the other side doesn't now what's that do well your mind knows that and as it flips around
it realizes that the ruler is turning you want your mind to think that the ruler is turning
but you want your mind to also think that the window is just going back and forth so
i'm going to place this right here and i want you to keep an eye on the side with the numbers on it
now let me slow it down
and even if it goes really slow if you take a close look at it
even when it's going really slow take a look at the side with the numbers on it and you'll see it
pass through the bars on the window a solid object passing through another solid object
of course it's not really a trick it's an optical illusion
there's no sleight of hand there's no gimmicks this is working because your
mind is putting it together for you with our understanding of field of view and perspective
now i found that the larger this is the farther you have to be away from it
so when i first drew this it wasn't going to work right here in my little studio because i
couldn't get the camera far enough away from it so i shrunk down the image for it to work better
and the closer you get to it the more your eyes help you out your eyes are actually looking at
something from two different angles and because of that as you get closer to something you can
actually see it from two different angles and so you can understand depth better but if you pull
the object farther away your eyes are now looking more along a parallel line or at least closer to
a parallel line and and because of that you lose your depth if you enjoy just my goofy experiments
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