Let’s play with perspective! If you’re looking from the right perspective, you can see a stepladder. That’s because your eyes actually see everything as a “flat” surface, like in a photograph.
But you can see depth, can’t you? Thanks to your brain. Your eyes send those “flat” images to your brain, which turns them into 3D images. This allows you to estimate how far away something is or how big something is.
Or at least most of the time… With this stepladder, you don’t immediately notice that some parts are further away. You can fool your brain! That’s why it’s sometimes difficult to see the difference between a small object nearby and a large object further away.
Perspective in butterflies
Here you see the pupa of a butterfly. Although it is very small, it can be mistaken for a monkey’s face from a distance. This is how it scares off predators, who don’t realise how small it really is.
(Photo: Haneesh K M., CC0, via Wikimedia Commons)
Perspective in travel
Playing with perspective makes for the coolest holiday photos. Do you have one of those?
Perspective in sun and moon
The sun’s diameter is 400x larger than the moon’s diameter. But the sun is also 400x further away from earth. Therefore, the sun and moon appear to be of equal size!
