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March 14, 2005
The Floating Finger Illusion (hand characters, too)
When my children were little, I invented all sorts of hand characters to amuse them. Two of the more obvious names I came up with were Handman and Fisticuffs. As you might expect, Handman was kind and gentle and Fisticuffs gruff and mean. He went on to found the Fisticuff Corporation which, in turn, owned just about everything imaginable. Other characters included Ostraloch and Ostralich, both of whom never placed their heads in the sand and had the now requisite opposing personalities. There was also a Bee With Hayfever and the Zither, and dozens of others I failed to remember. When pressed to bring them on stage, I took my cue from Ty Corporation and said they had retired.
As my children matured to say, five, the illusions became somewhat more sophisticated. I could do that bit where it looks like you are pulling off the end of your index finger. But today, only today, I discovered the coolest trick yet. I wish I knew this way back then. It is The Floating Finger Illusion. Try this at home. Go ahead. It works. The Floating Finger Illusion is:
A visual illusion that is seen when the forefingers of each hand are held horizontally about 30 centimetres in front of the eyes, with the fingertips touching and the gaze focused on a point in the distance, and the fingertips are then drawn apart about one centimetre. A disembodied finger, with two tips, appears floating in mid-air, and it can be lengthened or shortened by varying the distance between the fingertips (see illustration). The illusion was discovered in 1928 and described in the journal Psychological Review by the US psychologist Winford Lee Sharp (1890–1975).
Source:
"floating-finger illusion n." A Dictionary of Psychology. Andrew M. Colman. Oxford University Press, 2001. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. 15 March 2005
Posted by apc at March 14, 2005 10:09 PM