yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Tangram Paradoxes


less than 1m read
·Nov 10, 2024

I can take the seven pieces of a tangram and arrange them into a shape called the monk, but I can take the same seven pieces and arrange them into a monk with no feet.

Wait, what? Where'd the foot go? How can these be made of the same pieces? Is it magic? No, it's a Tang G Paradox, which is a kind of dissection fallacy.

In my Bonet Tarski video, I showed an example where we fail to notice how the parts have changed, so we're surprised when the whole does. But in this kind, we fail to notice exactly how the whole has changed, so we're surprised to find that the parts haven't.

Illusions like these are caused by the fact that a concentrated area of missing material is much more noticeable than an equal but diffused increase everywhere else that compensates for it.

Both of these figures have the same area. The one with no feet has a slightly larger body, but the area of just the feet spread out amongst an entire arrangement... well, it's kind of hard to see.

Sometimes the things we don't notice can be quite significant.

More Articles

View All
This Is the Extraordinary True Story of the First Camera Phone | Short Film Showcase
[Music] The first commercially successful digital camera was a Natasha camera. When that came, I really realized, together with the cell phone, it becomes the poet of the 21st century. [Music] Link generator, know something in the email authenticator. I t…
Mike Knoop on Product and Design Processes for Remote Teams with Kevin Hale
Hey guys, welcome to the podcast! How’s it going? Great! Cool. Kevin, welcome back! For people who don’t know you, what do you do? I’m a partner at Y Combinator. I founded a company called Wufoo back in 2006. I was in the second batch at YC. That company…
Eyeballs vs. Bullets in SlowMo - Smarter Every Day 26
[music] Hey, it’s me, Destin. When my granddad was young, he lost an eye playing cowboys and Indians, so tonight I’m gonna show you why you should always wear safety glasses or goggles when you’re doing an experiment. This isn’t very popular because I’ve …
The Stickiest *Non-Sticky* Substance
This is one of the strangest materials I have ever seen. It is not sticky at all. You can’t even stick regular tape to it. But if I drape it over this tomato, it holds it up, unless you turn it upside down, in which case it just falls off. Now does it onl…
Watch this Octopus Devour Crabs as It Jumps in the Water | Insane Animals | Secrets of the Octopus
Positioning rocks to make the perfect cover, the trap is set. Well-earned brain food. The island octopus has thought up, tested, and executed a killer hunting technique. Six months old, entirely self-taught, and already an accomplished strategist, as she…
Building a Bundle Boat | Live Free or Die
Feel like if I build a boat, it saved me a lot of walking. I saw a boorish pawn over here and I was thinking maybe getting a bunch of eats together, bundle them together, and make a boat. So what I want is big bundles. These, ‘cause you can see inside, i…