BrainMaths

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Summary

How do we know what we actually know?

We often hear ourselves or others say: "I'll believe it when I see it" But is that enough? Can we trust what we see? Or can our brains trick us into believing things that are not quite like they seem?



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Objective
The purpose of this activity is to use maths to explore visual or optical illusions.



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Preknowledge

  • Measuring things
  • Calculating the error of what we measure




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Activity
We will explore two illusions that have to do with size. We will first estimate which of two drawings is 'bigger' and which is 'smaller' (and if we can guesstimate by how much. We will then measure the size of the two drawings and write our results on the whiteboard. We will then calculate how much error our measurements have.

Based on that, we will discuss how what we 'measure' compares to what we 'see' and discuss why this may be the case.





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Did you know

We usually say we see with our eyes. But in reality we 'see' with both our eyes and our brains. The eyes work very much like a photo camera and the 'picture' is sent to a part of the brain that makes sense of that picture. One part of the brain that helps with this is called the visual cortex.




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Did you know

Mark Changizi says we have superpowers of vision:

  • telepathy
  • X-ray vision
  • future-seeing
  • spirit reading

Do you think he is right? Well you can ask him, because he has this wonderful blog!




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Did you know

According to Mark Changizi, ET probably lived in a forest



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Discussion
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Web Resources

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Reflection

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