Visual+Arts+-+Illusions+-+Ames+Rooms

===The Ames Room illusion is named after an American ophthalmologist, Adelbert Ames Jr. Ames first invented the room in the year 1946. The design of the room was based on Herman Helmholt's concept, first developed in the 19th century. There are many around the world including Melbourne; this one is located in the Melbourne Museum.===

===The room uses two illusions that trick the brain and eye. The first illusion is that the Ames Room may appear cubic to the eye but is actually trapezodial; the second illusion is that things can grow and shrink when they are inside the room. But the true illusion of an Ames Room is that it works by distorting the room to give the illusion of a difference in size depending on where you are standing and what you are looking at.===

===The person in the room feels like they are in a cubic room, while the person who looks through a peephole into the room sees the true shape and size of the area. It makes you think that you are standing in a room that has the same height, size and depth as the other person, when actually you are smaller than them because you are further away even though you think you are in the same place on either side of the room. The walls are slanted and the floor is uneven. One side of the room is twice as far as the other side even though it looks as if they are even from an angle the truth is hidden from the naked eye.===

===It is not only the room that plays the full role of causing the illusion, it is your brain and retina that does most of the work. Most people seem to think that your retina processes the image of an cubic room and keeps that image as an referral for the other shaped rooms you cross in your path later. They say that visual perception relies on the past experiences but that in fact has been proven to be false. People who live in rooms that are not cubic still see the room as being cubic like any other person who lives in a cubic room would. Al Seckel and Alire Klarke say that the reason many people see the room as that shape is because of the alignment of the corners, edges and angles with the horizon.===

===When you walk into the Ames Room you have an odd feeing about the space you are in but don't know what causes it. An English Visual Psychologist named Richard Gregory says that the oddness in the room has to do with the irregularities of the edges, corners etc. As we can't see these irregularities this statement seems reasonable. Seckel and Klarke have a similar theory only it has to do with the length and height instead of irregularities. This oddness disappears as soon as a person looks through the peephole and notices the true size of the room, so really both of them are correct.===

===The illusion of size is so convincing and strong that a person who is walking about in the room appears to be growing and shrinking rather than approaching and receding. The size illusion is caused by the strange shape of the room because a person does not normally walk around in a trapezoidal shaped room and therefore the size changes and occurs as a surprise to the person.===

However Seckel and Klarke believe that the shape of the room has nothing or very little to do with the size difference. In fact a horizontal path on a angled background is what causes the illusion.
===The Ames Room has also been used in a couple of movies like Lord Of The Rings to make the size illusion of the people. For instance Gandalf is bigger than the hobbits because of the illusion of the Ames Room.===

[[image:mcscbd2011/ames_room_occupied.jpg width="270" height="180" align="right" caption="Occupied Ames Room - Courtesy Of Google Advanced Image Search - http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1149960"]]
===I have now explained to you the science behind the Ames Room. If you want to look further into this illusion or any other illusion, go for it.===