Interesting Optical Illusions

I hope everyone knows what is an illusion.  An illusion is a kind of distortion of the senses, which reveals how the brain normally organizes and interprets sensory stimulation.   An optical illusion is always characterized by visually perceived images that are deceptive or misleading.  Here are some optical illusions which you may like.  See them and enjoy..

Spinning Dancer Illusion

This is another interesting illusion where you can see the dancer move both clock wise and anti clockwise.  This illusion is erroneously used as brain test to determine whether right or left hemisphere is dominant. 

If you either close the left or right image, and observe the other two images, you can see both of them rotating in same direction.

Otherwise let the rotating lady on right or left guide you.  If you look at the rotating lady on left, you will see all the three pictures are rotating left.  If you look at the rotating lady on right, you will observe that all the three ladies are rotating right.

 

Pacman Illusion  ( Rotating Dots optical illusion)

This is one of the fantastic illusions which is called as Pac Man Illusion.  In the Pac Man Optical Illusion, if you follow the rotating pink dot with your eyes, the dots will remain in only one color, pink.      But if you stare at the black  '+'  sign in the center, the moving dot will appear to be green in color.  

 

Please concentrate on the black '+' sign in the center, and you will see that the moving dot will appear to be green in color.   Keep on staring on the sign and after a short period, all the pink dots will slowly disappear and you will see only one green dot moving in the circle.

 

Same color Illusion

 This illusion is also known as Adelson's checker shadow illusion which shows something difficult to believe.  The square marked  B looks lighter than square marked A.  This is due to the shadow being cast on it.  But actually the color on both squares A and B  is exactly the same shade of grey.  If you cannot believe it, you can cut / print the squares to verify that both are exactly the same shade.  Look at the picture below.

If you can not believe that squares A  and  B are of same shade,  please see the video below which proves it.

50 Amazing Facts about Food

Here are some of the funniest and amazing facts about food.  Read them and enjoy.

1. 100 pounds of rain water is required to produce a single pound of food from earth.  
2. 11.9 pounds of cereal are consumed by average American / Canadian per year
3. Do you know that we get only one pound of coffee from one coffee tree?
4. The fear vegetables is called as Lachanophobia
5. Do you know that the French fries came from Belgium, but they are most popular in USA
6. The number one selling snack in USA is the Potato chips
7. Do you know that Russian children are given a birthday pie instead of birth day cake?
8. There are 500 different types of bananas.  So if you start eating one type of banana each day, it would take one and half year to eat every kind of banana
9. Banana is normally treated as a tree,  but it is not a tree but a herb. That means it does not have a woody trunk like a tree.  The stalk contains leaf sheaths that overlap each other and grow from underground stem called rhizome.
10. The banana plant can grow as high as 20 feet tall.
11. The Americans eat approximately 100 acres of pizza every day which means 350 slices per second.  Nearly 3 billion pizzas are sold in USA each year.
12. Tomatoes were originally treated to be poisonous.
13. During your life time,  you will eat around 60,000 pounds of food.  This is equal to weight of 6 elephants.
14. Strawberries have more Vitamin C than Oranges.
15. Coca Cola was the first soft drink to be consumed in outer space
16. Do you know that grapes explode when you put them in microwave?
17. The average chocolate bar has 8 insects' legs in it.
18. An average French citizen eats 500 snails per year
19. Watermelons can cost upto $100 in Japan!
20. An egg will float in water in which sugar is added 
21. The amount of wine that was destroyed in the 1906 San Franscisco earthquake was 15 million gallons.
22. There are more than 10,000 varieties of tomatoes.
23.  Carrot was purple in color in earlier days, it was not orange color
24. Do you know that smokers eat more sugar than non smokers?
25. Food gets into your stomach even if you are standing on your head.
26. Do you know that a pound of potato chips cost around 200 times more than a pound of potatoes?
27. One interesting fact about coconuts - Coconuts kill more people in this world than sharks do;  Nearly 150 people are killed by coconuts each year.
28. In ancient China,  people used to commit suicide by eating a pound of salt.
29. Do you know that dry swallowing one teaspoon of sugar will cure hic-ups?
30. A recent study at Harward shows that eating chocolate will help you to live longer
31. Do you know that Carrots have zero fat content?
32. All the coffee in this world is grown within 1000 miles of the equator.
33. Do you know that chocolates can kill dogs?  It directly affects their heart and nervous system
34. Goat's milk is widely used in the world than cow's milk
35. Butter milk does not contain any butter
36. Rice is the main food for half of the world population
37. Each pine apple plant produces only one pine apple per year!
38. Apples are a part of rose family
39. Pearls melt in vinegar
40. The onions have no flavour but only smell
41. The largest food item on a menu is a roast camel
42. A cluster of bananas is called a 'Hand'.  And a single banana is called as 'Finger'
43. When Cranberries are ripe, they bounce like a rubber ball
44. Americans consume 16 billion jelly beans at Easter.  if all these jelly beans were lined end to end, they would circle the globe three times
45. Apples are 25% air
46. The apples are  more efficient than caffeine in keeping people awake in mornings
47. Do you know that food can be tasted only if it is mixed with saliva?
48.  Peanuts are one of the ingredients of dynamite.
49. The biggest mushroom is in Oregon which is more than 2400 years old, and covers 3.4 square miles of area and it is still growing!!
50.  The Japanese liquor, Mam, uses venomous snakes as one of its main ingredients

Rare photo of old 1000 rupee note of India

Rare photo of old 1000 rupee note

Here is a photo graph of an old  1000 rupee note of India.   This note is very very old and it is a rare picture. 

Rare Indian coin with 150 grams weight

Rare Indian Coin

Here is a photograph of one of the rare coins of India.   The coin was manufactured in the year 1616.  The coin is very big of the size of a ladies bangle and has a weight of 150 grams.   This is an English East Indian coin.  See the photograph of the coin below.

Most amusing facts about animals

Here are some of the most amusing and interesting facts about animals

• The lion was the most wide spread large land mammal after humans 10,000 years ago.
• The night vision of tigers is 6 times better than that of humans
• Do you know that there are more than 20,000 species of ants in our planet
• Do you know that queen ants live up to 30 years where as ant workers live up to 3 years
• It is a fact that Giraffe sleeps less than 2 hours per day on average
• Almost all gorillas have same blood group type (B type)
• The DNA of gorillas is 95 to 99% same as humans
• A cheetah can reach a speed of 120 Km/h.  It is the fastest land animal
• Some of the dolphin species have upto 250 teeth
• Sharks have up to 3000 teeth
• The largest dinosaurs weighed 90,000 to 1,00,000 Kilograms as per an estimate by Scientists
• The smallest dinosaur was about the size of a chicken
• Flies consume only liquid food as they have no teeth
• A fly has a life span of only few days
• Do you know that the smallest snake in this world is only 4 inches long and the longest snake can be more than 10 meters long.
• The snakes cannot bite or tear their food to pieces,  so they just swallow the prey completely

Interesting facts about Milky Way Galaxy

Do you know that our solar system is inside the Milky Way Galaxy?  Yes, Milky Way Galaxy is the Galaxy in which our solar system is located.  Milky Way is one of the billions of other galaxies in this universe.  Here are some of the most amazing facts about Milky Way Galaxy.

• There are more than 200 billion stars in Milky Way Galaxy
• The largest neighboring galaxy to Milky Way galaxy is the Andromeda Galaxy
• The oldest star in Milky Way Galaxy is 13.2 billion years old which is almost same as old as the universe
• The diameter of Milky Way Galaxy is 100,000 light years
• The galactic year is the time needed for solar system to complete one orbit around the galaxy.  In the case of Milky Way galaxy, it is abut 225 to 250 million years
• The Andromeda Galaxy is approaching our galaxy at a speed of 140 kilometers per second which means Milky Way galaxy may collide with Andromeda in 3 to 4 billion years
• There are black holes in Milky Way Galaxy
• The milky way galaxy rotates clockwise

Amazing Facts about Hubble Telescope

Amazing Facts about Hubble Telescope

We all know that Hubble Telescope is the most famous telescope in this world and it has helped the astronomers by giving valuable information.  Hubble Telescope was launched into space on 24th April, 1990 by Space Shuttle Discovery.  Here are some of the most amazing facts about Hubble Telescope.

• Length of Hubble Telescope is  43.5 Feet ( 13.2 meters)
• Weight of Hubble Telescope is 24,500 pounds ( 11,110 Kg)
• Hubble Telescope revolves around earth at a speed of  5 miles per second
• The cost at the time of launch of Hubble Telescope was $1.5 Billions
• The orbit of Hubble Telescope is at a height of 569 Kms. above the surface of earth and is inclined at 28,5 degrees to the equator
• The time to complete one orbit by Hubble Telescope is 97 minutes
• The speed of Hubble Telescope is 17,500 miles per hour ( 28,000 Kms / Hour)
• Hubble telescope transmits about 120 Giga Bytes of science data every week to earth.
• The Hubble Telescope does not consume much power.  It consumes about 2800 watts of electricity while a typical kitchen kettle is rated 2200 watts.  It gets the power from a couple of solar panels.
• The Hubble Telescope is now in the final phase of its life.  Some of the vital systems of Hubble telescope will fail after 2014 and it becomes useless after that.  The Hubble telescope re enter the earth's atmosphere between 2019 and 2030 and will burn.