Why you look different in height and size in the same room? — Ames Room Illusion
Visual optical illusion is the phenomenon indicating the distortion or inconsistency between the sensory stimuli and human’s perception on those stimuli. In other words, human may encounter illusions when the objects they perceived cannot correctly represent the physical properties. I will introduce one of the very famous optical illusions — Ames Room Illusion in this story as well as share some thoughts regarding the human perceptual system.
The Strange Ames Room
When looking into the Ames Room (see the above picture), assuming that all three people are in the same height, say, 178cm, the size and height perception of people there will be highly distorted. You can realize that the man on the left looks so weirdly small whereas the guy on the right size looks ridiculously big.
The Ames Room illusion is due to the structure of Ames Room. The Ames Room is specially designed to make the illusion work. A picture of the structure of Ames Room is shown below.
