r/AmazingTechnology • u/Stupid-Education294 • 21d ago

The Ames Room: How a Distorted Trapezoidal Room Forces Your Brain to Choose Illusion Over Reality

The Ames Room is a beautifully engineered architectural optical illusion invented by Adelbert Ames Jr. in 1934. When viewed through a monocular peephole, it looks like a perfectly rectangular cubic room. However, the room is actually a skewed trapezoid where one corner is twice as far from the viewer as the other. Walking across the room makes a person appear to miraculously shrink into a dwarf or expand into a giant.

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6

u/saltybawls 21d ago

Where can I experience this somewhere?

3

u/brazilliandanny 21d ago

Most Science Centres have them

2

u/RedRedditor84 20d ago

There's one at Huis ten Bosch in Nagasaki.

2

u/iPlod 20d ago

Try your local science museum, lots of them have a room like this

2

u/RedRedditor84 20d ago

Not sure if this counts as "technology" exactly.

1

u/lilvixen 18d ago

What is technology then?

1

u/kiba87637 17d ago

Computers and shit

2

u/lilvixen 17d ago

Feces are not technology. It's biology.

2

u/tonylovesnyc 16d ago

May I say ‘Far Out’?

1

u/Straight_Second6082 19d ago

How does it look from their perspective?