Put me out of my misery

[krozman]

this is a repost from months ago somewhere in screenshots forum, but please, god, someone explain to me how it's possible. My mathematical pride is lost.

[Awanka]

Originally Posted by krozman

this is a repost from months ago somewhere in screenshots forum, but please, god, someone explain to me how it's possible. My mathematical pride is lost.

I think it's some trick to the way the hypotenuse is being drawn. If you look at the diagonal edge of the bottom triangle and the boxes it takes up, and contrast that to the boxes the diagonal line up above crosses, you'll notice the bottom triangle takes up more box area. I think this is where the "extra space" is coming from.

[Tuco]

The reason is that there's very difficult to percieve differences (no magic solution), not least of which is that the angles of the red and green triangles are different (2/5 != 3/8). You'll also notice the bottom (with the gap) has a slightly outward bent shape, adn the above has a slightly inward bent shape.

This post of putting you out of your misery is thanking for your continued support ( http://www.fohguild.org/forums/gener...tml#post759589 ) of my finances.

[Millie]

Ummm, I am *really* bad at math, so I didn't even try to solve this mathematically. But if you visualize moving the pieces around like puzzle blocks, it totally makes sense.

- Red gets shifted up two, and five to the right
- Orange moves down one, three to the left
- Dark Green moves to the left of Orange (down three, eight to the left)
- Light Green stays in place

The gap isn't created out of thin air; it just is that way when you move the pieces around in your head. It has nothing to do with curvature or bending, as far as I can tell.

[joeintokyo]

yeah i get this all the time.

I play these kinds of puzzle games on my cell phone and sometimes you can get all the blocks to fit into the outline and still have space when a simple rearranging of the patterns will get them to fill in the whole outline.

[AngryGerbil]

Tuco is falling victim to an optical illusion. The top is not the same as the bottom by simple virtue of the gap.

The bottom can recreate the angle through rearrangement, but it cannot recreate the shape. It is the angle that fucks people up.

[Blumpster]

Actually, Tuco is right. They are not triangles, they are quadrilaterals. Both shapes take up exactly the same area.

Shamelessly stolen from GRAND ILLUSIONS

[brekk]

i made a pic in paint accentuating the difference between the two shapes.

[krozman]

Damn the world for tricking me. Michael Moore's next documentary should be on this, because clearly if I were educated in a non public school, I'd have been able to figure this out.

[WarderX]

The extra fatness of the top of the 2nd one makes up for the missing space.

[...]

i made a pic in paint making a SPACE SHIP!

[Kaige]

Put some circles for corresponding spots on each "puzzle". Here you can notice the subtle differences.

[brekk]

Originally Posted by ...

i made a pic in paint making a SPACE SHIP!

bite me

[AngryGerbil]

Originally Posted by Blumpster

Actually, Tuco is right. They are not triangles, they are quadrilaterals. Both shapes take up exactly the same area.

Shamelessly stolen from GRAND ILLUSIONS

Man now I'm aggravated. I see the same "fatness" thing Tuco sees, but I've looked at enough optical illusions to think that this is one. But now that I see the shaceship mspaint, I think maybe Tuco is right and I was the one who was fooled. I said the angle is what gets people and I think it just got me.

I hate this puzzle and I hope someone suicide bombs the person who made it. (job opportunity, Phoenix)

[brekk]

OK both "triangles" (technically close to triangles) are inside a 5x13 box with an area of 65.

If you sum up the areas of the individual parts of each "triangle" each group of shapes has an area of 32. 65 - 32 - 32 = 1 hence the one empty box.

Edit: added another ms paint pic (not as crappy) showing that its not really an optical illusion.