Optical Illusions at OMSI, Portland Oregon.

A couple weeks ago I took a trip with my exchange brother to show him the cities in the northwest. He is from Kyrgyzstan and has been here in Oregon with my mom since September. At first we had planned a trip down the coast and some camping down in the Redwoods forest but we changed to the city trip when he heard we were gonna have to sleep on the ground for three nights in a row.
While we were in Portland we explored the city along the waterfront for a couple hours during the evening. The next day we woke up with an open schedule to do something fun and after a little searching Baiel decided on going to OMSI. He is very interested in robotics and the sciences so what better place to explore for the day than a museum dedicated to science and industry. We got passes that would let us into OMSI to see their exhibit "Optical Illusions" and paid a little extra so we could go watch a movie about Africa in the old IMAX theater. Our movie started shortly after we got there so we grabbed a soy chai and a bagel while we waited for it to start.
The movie was cool, 3d glasses added to the excitement of seeing the creatures and environments of Africa coming alive and out of the screen. After the movie we browsed our way through the gift store. I almost bought a gem and rock book thinking about how useful it could be in petrology and petrography both of which I'm taking this term and next. It was like 23 dollars so I decided against it. Baiel found some sphere magnets that he bought. I laughed when he told me that he had always wanted round magnets and had never been able to find them before. From the gift shop we walked around to the main exhibit "Optical Illusions". The exhibit was super cool and at times a little mind bending.
My camera ended up dying after the exhibit. This sucked because after the optical illusions we checked out the mineral and gem collection. Being a geologist this was my favorite part of the museum and I was super disappointed my camera died. I guess that was good for you guys because now you won't be flooded with pictures and descriptions of dozens of minerals. We also looked at the fossil exhibit and the renewable energy room which were both equally interesting. After that we went over to the other side of OMSI with the robotics section, there was tons of different contraptions over there that kept Baiel enthralled for about an hour.
We had an awesome day exploring and learning cool facts that we hadn't known before and I highly suggest visiting if you have never been or are visiting Portland. We paid 24 dollars each but spent about six hours there which I thought was very worth it. I took all these photos with my Panasonic DMC-G1 on various settings due to the changing light conditions. Below are all the best shots from the day while my camera still had power. Thank you for taking the time to read and scroll through my pictures!!!!!
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When viewed at the right angle this mans face becomes unified

But when viewed from the side, each piece is of varying size and position

A corner that has images projected onto it to give it depths and dimension

A rotating table with a scene slowly progressing in each wedge with a strobe light

This illusion used lighting and water to give off the impression that singles drops of water were actually flowing upwards out of the well and back into the cans. I wasn't able to catch the water flowing upwards with still camera shots but catching the single droplets in motion was pretty cool I thought.

Side view of the illusion

Illusion from the front

This piece was cool because depending on the exact angle you were looking from you would see indented cubes or cubes that seemed to be protruding from the image. I like standing at an angle where the cubes were indented, made me think of how there could be dimensions with depth that we can't see as humans because we are looking at it from the wrong angle. Geometric shapes have always captured my attention and as you can tell my imagination.

Protruding or recessed????

Your classic optical illusion

A galaxy composed of pinholes in a sheet of metal with a light behind it

This video appeared to show the man walking/stumbling along the spinning record playing below

My exchange brother Baiel

Here we found an exhibit that used software to source trending images across the internet and then build an image of you out of those trending photos. There was a camera that picked up your image and a screen where your image would appear. The longer you let the software run while standing in front of it the clearer the image became. Alex stood in front of the exhibit for about twenty seconds in all and the final picture actually was a pretty good representation.

Photo of the exhibit after about five seconds

Exhibit after about twenty seconds

I had to give the creator of this piece a hand, seriously

Images of faces of visitors drawn by a robotic hand, the hand was controlled by software that would take a picture of the visitor and try to accurately translate that to the robotic hand.

This section was pretty cool, it played with lighting and shadows. The room had several different colors of lights that would then give off colored shadows that seem to be counter intuitive. The different colored lights would mix and create shadows of colors that weren't even on the light bar. Besides the gems and minerals this was my favorite part of the whole OMSI trip.

Colored Shadows

Myself taking a picture of my colored shadows in the "Light Lab"
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