25 Optical Illusion Pictures That Make You Feel Dizzy

The World is full of optical illusions and sometimes such illusions can make you hallucinate too, and some things aren’t always the way they appear to us. Although your mind always tries to make something out of it but sometimes it can get a little out of control and make us start to see things that we aren’t expecting…literally.

While some of these optical illusions are famous and some are a bit unknown but all of them give us a glance into your amazingly complex minds. There is no trick involved, no cords are attached, it's all inside your head.

Here are 25 optical illusion pictures that will make you absolutely stunned and confused:

1) Rotating Rings

This optical illusion is also known as Pinna Illusion, the first visual illusion showing a rotating motion effect. Now if you just stare at the dot present exactly in the center of image and move your head away from the screen the rings will start to rotate. Now gradually get closer again…they will change their rotating direction!

2) Fading Image

Just stare at the black dot present in the center of image for a minute without disturbing your eyes and consciously watch as it slowly disappears. This is a variation of Troxler’s effect which essentially says that if you fixate your eyes on a certain point, stimuli near that point will gradually fade.

3) Hering Illusion

This is a geometrical-optical illusion and was discovered by the German physiologist Ewald Hering in 1861. When two straight and parallel lines are presented in front of a radial background (like the spokes of a bicycle), the lines appear as if they were bowed outwards. 

4) Hermann Grid

This is a classic optical illusion named after Ludimar Hermann in 1870. At every point where the white lines intersect created by the squares your eyes perceive a gray color, shadowy blob. If you look directly at one of the intersections though, the blob disappears.

5) Spinning Silhouette

This was created by web designer Nobuyuki Kayahara, some people at first see the figure spinning clockwise while others see it spinning counterclockwise. Don’t spend too much time trying to decode it though, you could be here all day.

 

6) Zöllner Illusion

This is an optical illusion named after Johann Karl Friedrich Zöllner in 1860, a German astrophysicist. It consists of parallel lines that appear to be diagonal. You may need a ruler for this one.

7) Up and Down

Although it is obvious that the pillars in this optical illusion gif are staying in the same horizontal position, your brain is convinced that they should be moving to the right.

8) Static Motion

No, this is not an optical illusions GIF. The image really is static. Notice that when you look at any individual dead point, it will stop moving. This powerful optical illusion is derived from interacting color contrasts and shape positions within the image.

9) Cafe Illusion

This optical illusion was recently discovered in a cafe wall at the bottom of St. Michael’s Hill. Although the lines appear to be diverging from one another, in fact they are quite parallel.

10) Rotating Squares

At first, this optical illusion picture may be hard to see, but if you start to scan back and forth across the image you will notice that the squares in your periphery begin to rotate. As soon as your eyes stop moving, however, the rotation will cease.

11) Lilac Chaser

The lilac chaser is a visual illusion, also known as the pac-man illusion, if you stare at the cross at the center for a couple of seconds you will begin to recognize a green disco going around the circle of magenta discs. After a few more seconds the magenta discs will gradually begin to fade away until all you see is a green disc going in a circle around the cross (if you’re having trouble seeing this optical illusion move closer to the screen).

12) Titchener Circles

This was named after the German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus in 1901. This optical illusion is Also known as the Ebbinghaus Illusion. Essentially, the orange circle on the left appears to be smaller than the one on the right although, in reality, they are of the same sizes.

13) Endless Staircase

Like the blivet, this is also an impossible object type optical illusion named after Lionel Penrose and his son Roger Penrose. It is a two-dimensional depiction of a staircase in which the stairs make four 90-degree turns as they ascend or descend yet form a continuous loop, so that a person could climb them forever and never get any higher.

14) Leaning Tower

Yes, the leaning tower of Pisa does actually lean, but these two images are in fact one and the same. Although the image on the right appears to be leaning away from the one on the left this is because when two identical towers rise in parallel but are viewed from below, their corresponding outlines converge in the retinal image due to perspective. Go ahead and try the same thing with the empire state building…it will lean too, promise.

15) Floating Staircase

Floating staircases are designed to minimize or hide the supporting structure of the staircase. This gives the impression that the stair treads are floating. If you ever get lucky enough, from the right angle, you may just catch a glimpse into the practical artistic applications of optical illusions and the way your mind interprets them.

16) Blivet

This optical illusion is also known as an impossible trident,an impossible fork, poiuyt, or a devil's tuning fork. This is one of the most famous optical illusion drawings of an impossible object. It appears to have three cylindrical prongs at one end which then mysteriously transform into two rectangular prongs at the other end.

17) Checker Shadow Illusion

This is one of the unbelievable optical illusions out there published by Edward H. Adelson, Professor of Vision Science at MIT in 1995. The optical illusion is that the area labeled “B” appears to be a darker color than the area labeled “A”, they are actually exactly the same shade of gray. It’s okay if you don’t believe it, we didn’t either, but Photoshop proved us wrong.

18) Jastrow Illusion

This was named after Joseph Jastrow in 1889, a Polish-American psychologist. This optical illusion is also known as Ring-Segment illusion, Wundt area illusion or Wundt-Jastrow illusion. In this image the bottom figure appears to be larger although they both are of the same sizes. As per several explanations, it is because the shorter edge of “A” is directly adjacent to the longer edge of “B”.

19) Kanizsa Triangle

This was named after the psychologist Gaetano Kanizsa in 1986. When you look at the image your brain creates contours (outlines) of a triangle although none exist. In reality it is an illusion created by the wedges and the angles.

20) Ehrenstein illusion

This is an optical original Ehrenstein illusion studied by the German psychologist Walter Ehrenstein in which the sides of a square placed inside a pattern of concentric circles take an apparent curved shape.

   

In the above image, it is an alternative Ehrenstein illusion, where the ends of the dark segments produce the illusion of circles.

21) Monster Illusion

Found in most psychology textbooks in the world, the two monsters in this optical illusion are in fact the same size. Your brain automatically adjusts images that it perceives to be distant in order to compensate for the fact that they are larger than they seem.

22) Fraser Spiral

First described by British psychologist James Fraser in 1908, this illusion is also known as the “false spiral”. While it appears that the overlapping arcs are spiraling into infinity they are in fact only a series of concentric circles.

23) Moon Illusion

The Moon illusion is an optical illusion which causes the Moon to appear larger near the horizon than it does higher up in the sky. It has been known since ancient times and recorded by various cultures. The explanation of this illusion is still debated.

A sketched diagram of the Moon (shown above) seen against a cloud of the same size, at different heights in the sky. When the Moon is high, the clouds it is against are closer to the viewer and appear larger. When the Moon is low in the sky, the same clouds are further away and appear smaller, giving the illusion of a larger Moon. Another detailed diagram of moon illusion shown below.

24) Wonder Block

Yet again we have an example of an impossible object except for this time it’s the rotation of the blocks that is inconsistent. Are they side by side or on top of each other? Maybe that’s why they call them indecipherable figures.

25) Poggendorff illusion

This is a geometrical-optical illusion named after Johann Christian Poggendorff in 1860. In the above image, it involves the misperception of the position of one segment of a transverse line that has been interrupted by the contour of an intervening structure.

Source: Google, Wikipedia & optics4kids

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