21 January 2013

Tree of Science, January 21

Today it may be warm for the Inauguration in Washington, but the temperature is dropping in Williamstown.  Today, I'm re-presenting an image from January 7, but slightly doctored...

Here, we see two images of the Tree of Science side-by-side.  By now, you probably understand that the tree leans slightly toward the science buildings, but here we see the trees of this image seem to lean apart.  With a little effort, you can convince yourself that this is simply two copies of the same image in parallel.

Your brain is used to a world where two parallel objects appear to converge as they recede from view.  Here, of course, the two images are parallel, so your brain interprets this as two objects that diverge.  That's wrong, of course....the Tree of Science teaches us something, again.