That’s because of the way the colours are lined up next to each other inside the circles! Look at the image below by Professor Akiyoshi Kitaoka. Test this by cutting out the two blocks and placing them side by side. Adelson.īecause of the shadow from the green cylinder, your brain thinks that block ‘B’ is lighter than block ‘A’, but they are actually exactly the same. Sometimes trick your brain into seeing things that aren’t really there. The way artists use colours and shading can Now, for older children take a look at some of these optical illusions. That’s because white light is actually a mixture of all the colours in the spectrum. If you put all 6 colours from the colour wheel on a spinner then they would blend together and disappear. It’s a bit like colour mixing, which we will explore in the next section, but it’s happening in our brain Plate Spinning | Art and Science | Early Years Weekĭid you make your plate? What colours can you see?īecause the patterns of colours are going faster than our eyes can pick up, our brain will blend them together.
