Why do the people inside look totally dry? And how does that man’s hat stay on? Shouldn’t their hair be floating upward? Do we see someone using their phone? Mystery solved! This swimming pool is actually a very special pool that contains no water.
It’s an art installation at the 21st Century of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan. There is a hallway and a door to enter the pool from the bottom, while a glass plate covers the surface of the pool with a foot of water on top, giving the impression of a filled pool. Now all they need is a pretend swimmer at the top.
A Lakeside Mirage
Although it looks like a nice strip of white sandy beach at the base of rolling green hills, don’t bother pulling over to take a dip. Tell your brain that the green sea that spreads out before you is not real. Insist it is just an optical illusion.
Look at it again and try to visualize, instead, a concrete barrier on the side of a highway what it is. The shrubs obscure the concrete barrier, and the shadow on the side of the wall appears to be a lake, while the sunshine on the top of the wall looks like a long strip of beach.
Watch It Wiggle
Here’s a fun little distraction to make your brain freak. This one is a little more interactive than the other illusions in this article. Looking at it as it is will not be very entertaining, but if you put a tiny little work into it you'll see what we're talking about.
Assuming you’re viewing this image from your phone, shake it up a bit. When you’re done shaking the device, look at the Oreo cookie in the center of the cake and watch it dance! The jiggling effect sort of turns the cake into Jell-O. It’s like the cookie is still shimmying and shaking even after you’ve stopped moving the phone.
An Impossible Repair Job
A clever Reddit user captured this scene at just the right angle to drive us bonkers. It looks like these repairmen are defying the laws of physics by reaching across to this side of the bridge from the distance of the street, where their lift vehicle is parked. How could their lift stretch so far?
Well, for starters, their lift has horizontal motion as well as vertical. So, the reality is those workers are repairing the bridge from where their vehicle is parked. As a bonus optical illusion, check out that orange safety cone that seems to levitate above the worker on the ground.
A Real Illusion With a Scientific Explanation
This is an actual photo of a boat that seems to be floating in the air. The image was not tweaked with photoshopping, and it was not taken from a strange angle in order to create the illusion. It even has a name. It’s called the Fata Morgana, named after the Arthurian sorceress Morgan le Fay. Italian shipman superstitiously believed it was she who lured sailors to their deaths by tricking them with a mirage of land.
Fata Morgana is a rare phenomenon that occurs when there is an inversion layer. Warm air is usually nearest to the Earth. When it inverts and colder air is close to the sea, it causes the atmospheric illusion. It’s rare because when the inversion layers occur, wind generally mixes the air, and no effect is noticed.