Impossible cube photo The crazy crate cannot be made of lumber. Yet the photograph shown here is of something made of lumber, something that certainly looks like the crazy crate. It is a cheat. One piece, which seems to pass behind another, is actually two pieces with a break, one nearer, one farther than the crossing piece. This only seems to be a crate from one particular viewing point. If you looked at the real thing from near this point, your stereoscopic vision would give the trick away. If you moved your head from the viewing point for which it was designed, you”d see the trick. In museum displays of this you are forced to look through a small hole in a wall, using only one eye.
To make such a photograph, one has to engage in deception. If an ordinary camera is used, the more distant lumber pieces subtend a smaller angle than the nearer ones. So the more distant ones must be made physically larger, and those that have one end nearer than the other end must be tapered in size from one end to the other. |