Make Your Own Optical Illusion

​This easy and fun science activity is a great way for your child to learn something new while celebrating a special birthday!

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Make Your Own Optical Illusion

You will need:

• Paper 
• Pens, Pencils, Crayons or Markers for Colouring 
• A Thick straw 
• Scissors 
• Stapler 

Instructions:

1. Fold a piece of regular paper in half.  
2. On one of the folded halves of the paper draw a fish bowl that is almost as big as the piece of paper. Make sure you leave the middle of the fishbowl free of any colouring. 
3. On the folded half of the paper draw two fish in the very middle and center of the paper and colour them in.   
4. Fold the paper again so that the bowl is on one side and the fish are on the other and staple the paper shut on the open side.  
5. Using the scissors, cut a slit at the top of the straw that is about 1 cm. Then cut another slit on the same end of the straw but on the opposite side so that the straw folds flat where the slits are. 
6. Staple the piece of paper to the flat end of the straw using two staples. 
7. Now with the straw between your hands, rub your hands together to make the picture spin! 

 
How does it happen?

• This optical illusion uses motion to trick our brains into seeing the fish on one side of the paper as inside the bowl on the other side. 
• This happens because the information about the pictures gathered by the eye is processed by the brain. This processing by the brain is called perception, and in cases like optical illusions, our brain perceives things that are different than the true image. 
• Perception occurs because our brains take in information and try to make sense of it , but sometimes brains don’t do a perfect job of this. 

For more information, and pictures, please visit https://www.craftnhome.com/fish-in-a-bowl-craft.html