Impossible motion: magnet-like slopes

May 12 2010, 1:44pm

Winner of the Best Visual Illusion of the Year Contest 2010 http://illusioncontest.neuralcorrelate.com Koukichi Sugihara Meiji Institute for Advanced Study of Mathematical Sciences, Japan

In this video, wooden balls roll up the slopes just as if they are pulled by a magnet. The behavior of the balls seems impossible, because it is against the gravity. The video is not a computer graphic, but a real scene. What is actually happening is that the orientations of the slopes are perceived oppositely, and hence the descending motion is misinterpreted as ascending motion. This illusion is remarkable in that it is generated by a three-dimensional solid object and physical motion, instead of a two-dimensional picture.