Ames room

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Sketch of an Ames room
Video of a man walking through an Ames room; at the end, the entire room was taken from a different angle

An Ames room is a room whose walls and textures are distorted to create various optical illusions . Based on considerations by Hermann von Helmholtz , the Ames room was developed in 1946 by the US ophthalmologist and psychologist Adelbert Ames (1880–1955).

From a certain, predetermined point of view, an Ames room looks like an ordinary room with the walls at right angles to each other and to the floor and ceiling. In fact, however, the room is distorted in a trapezoidal shape. Even if the opposite wall appears parallel to the observer, one of the two corners is further away than the other. If two people of the same size stand in these corners, the one further away appears smaller than the other. If you move in the Ames room from the rear corner to the corner closer to the viewer, the viewer has the impression that you are growing while moving at right angles to his eye axis.

It should be noted that the viewer is only allowed to look through the peephole with one eye (monocular viewing). When seeing with one eye, the viewer uses his experience (with regard to the floor plan of rooms: right-angled) to develop the depth information from the optical environment.

literature

  • T. Hanitz, E. Sukowski, Bernd Lingelbach: The Amesraum. In: Deutsche Optiker Zeitung. 51 (10), 1996, pp. 34-38
  • J. Dwyer, R. Ashton et al .: Emmert's Law in the Ames Room. In: Perception. 19, 1990, pp. 35-41

Web links

Commons : Optical illusions  - collection of images, videos and audio files