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How to Make Your Eyes Change Color With Optical Illusion

Making eyes see color changes with optical illusion is a fun way to introduce kids to the phenomenon of color afterimages. This only works with complementary, or opposing, colors, such as red and green shades, and yellow and blue shades. Modern perception theory assumes that these are two specific channels for vision. Thus staring at one color will fatigue those specific color detectors, so that when you look away, you see the opposing afterimage.

Things You'll Need

Red, green, yellow and blue paint
Red, green, yellow and blue magic markers
Black pen
White paper

Instructions

- 1
  Paint or color in with marker a large dot on a white piece of paper, in the color red, and then repeat on separate paper with the colors green, yellow and blue. Very bright or neon colors work best for this experiment.
- 2
  Stare at the red dot for 20 seconds, then shift your eyes to a white piece of paper, and you should see a green dot. The opposite should occur when you stare at the green dot for 20 seconds.
- 3
  Stare at the yellow dot for 20 seconds, then shift your eyes to a white piece of paper, and you should see a blue dot. The opposite should occur when you stare at the blue dot for 20 seconds.
- 4
  Create other optical illusions with these colors to provide fun for children. For instance, coloring or painting a red dot inside a green box will cause a reverse of the colors when the kids shift their eyes to a white piece of paper.
- 5
  Staring at a bright green cardinal-shaped bird for 20 seconds and then shifting eyes to an empty bird cage drawn on white paper with black ink creates the image of a red or magenta cardinal in the cage.

Kids Games