Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, January 1899: Volume LIV, No. 3, January 1899Various
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, January 1899: Volume LIV, No. 3, January 1899
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
[Illustration: FIG. 11.--This represents an ordinary table-glass, the
bottom of the glass and the entire rear side, except the upper
portion, being seen through the transparent nearer side, and the rear
apparently projecting above the front. But it fluctuates in appearance
between this and a view of the glass in which the bottom is seen
directly, partly from underneath, the _whole_ of the rear side is seen
through the transparent front, and the front projects above the back.]
[Illustration: FIG. 12.--In this scroll the left half may at first
seem concave and the right convex, it then seems to roll or advance
like a wave, and the left seems convex and the right concave, as
though the trough of the wave had become the crest, and _vice versa_.]
A good example to begin with is Fig. 8. These outlines will probably
suggest at first view a book, or better a book cover, seen with its
back toward you and its sides sloping away from you; but it may also
be viewed as a book opened out toward you and presenting to you an
inside view of its contents. Should the change not come readily, it
may be facilitated by thinking persistently of the appearance of an
open book in this position. The upper portion of Fig. 9 is practically
the same as Fig. 8, and if the rest of the figure be covered up, it
will change as did the book cover; when, however, the whole figure is
viewed as an arrow, a new conception enters, and the apparently solid
book cover becomes the _flat_ feathered part of the arrow. Look at the
next figure (Fig. 10), which represents in outline a truncated pyramid
with a square base. Is the smaller square nearer to you, and are the
sides of the pyramid sloping away from you toward the larger square in
the rear? Or are you looking into the hollow of a truncated pyramid
with the smaller square in the background? Or is it now one and now
the other, according as you decide to see it? Here (Fig. 13) is a
skeleton box which you may conceive as made of wires outlining the
sides. Now the front, or side nearest to me, seems directed downward
and to the left; again, it has shifted its position and is no longer
the front, and the side which appears to be the front seems directed
upward and to the right. The presence of the diagonal line makes the
change more striking: in one position it runs from the left-hand
_rear_ upper corner to the right-hand _front_ lower corner; while in
the other it connects the left-hand _front_ upper corner with the
right-hand _rear_ lower corner.
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