planetdan

Thursday, August 26, 2004 :::

This hurts my head.

I can't figure this out. I feel dumb. If anyone can explain how this works, please inform me.

Click to see the magic of mathematics.

P.S. Ignore the Japanese characters, this must've come from some asian site.

::: posted by dan at 9:50 PM :: [ link ] :: (8) comments

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8 previous comments:

It is magic!!! Can you imagine how rich we'd all be if we could do that to currency!! Just cut it up and bingo, a whole extra...penny? Makes my head hurt too.

By

Colleen, at 10:56 PM

I don't know what the heck is going on here but I don't think the size of the boxes is necessarily staying constant.

In mathematics it is impossible to change the area of an object just by rearranging the layout. It may be magic.

By

Trekgeekscott, at 7:22 AM

math and politics....guess you are not blogging for me today.

By

Stacy, at 8:21 AM

I'm tempted to e-mail this to Dave Adney (former math teacher at PC) to see if he can explain it to me. Its really just simply annoying!

By

hot babe, at 4:51 PM

This one really perplexed me also. I tossed the math around in my feeble little mind for quite a while, and when that didn't work, I opened up photoshop and recreated the boxes. Upon doing so, I figured out how they did it. Here's my re-creation of the puzzle after I re-arranged the pieces. you can see where the extra block came from when they are rearranged.

(if you want to believe it was magic, then dont' click the link)
http://www.dancingpaul.com/images/Mathpuzzle.gif

By

Anonymous, at 6:32 PM

I may be missing something, but all it looks like to me is that the orange shape turns so that the longer sides end up on the perimeter of the second shape that's created, thus adding a unit.

By

A., at 4:21 PM

It's not magic. I don't think so. I have eo show it to my bapuji vada, an engineer. Ya know all that smart stuff ...

By

Anonymous, at 11:42 PM

I read about this trick many years ago on a psychology book. If i remember correctly, it increases the thinkness of borderline by a tiny amount, enough to fool ours eyes and brains.

By

Anonymous, at 1:10 AM

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