Turning the Tables
Two tables: one long and thin, one short and wide. Or are they?
How to play
Look first, then answer
Two tables: one long and thin, one short and wide. Or are they?
- Under a minute · one question · then the explanation
How it works — best read after you have tried it
Undoing a depth that is not there
The two tabletops are the same parallelogram, one turned a quarter turn. The legs and edges make you see surfaces lying in depth, and your brain undoes the foreshortening it expects: the top that points away from you is stretched out to its supposed real length, the one lying across is not.
The psychologist Roger Shepard drew it for his book of illusions Mind Sights in 1990. Knowing the answer does not make the effect go away — the correction happens before you get a say.