Instructify

BY BILL FERRIS

Let’s get the disclaimer out of the way — Get High Now has to do with optical and audio illusions. It in no way advocates getting hepped up on goofball. To quote from the site itself:

“Get High Now is an illustrated, mind-blowing magic carpet ride of more than 175 ways to alter human perception and consciousness—without drugs or alcohol” (emphasis added lest you think Instructify is promoting anything inappropriate for a school audience).

See? We’re still a family site, more or less.

Anyway, the Get High Now website is a companion to a book of the same name. Both catalog stunning illusions of sight and sound, explaining the biology and neuroscience that makes them possible.

For example, take the rotating snake, which uses alternating dark and light colors to trick our brains into seeing motion (and in some cases, inducing epileptic seizures — seriously). Or look at the Fraser Spiral (pictured), which isn’t really a spiral, but a series of circles. That one works “by guiding the eye through a sequence of counter-angles. The eye and brain are not accustomed to processing images this geometrically complicated, and thus try to normalize the circles by imagining them as a single line, a phantom spiral corkscrewing its way to the center.”

The audio highs are no less impressive. Listen to the holophonic sound demonstration with a good set of headphones and you’ll swear you hear the audio move behind, in front of, and above your head. Hear how the Risset Rhythm seems to get faster and faster, when it actually maintains the same number of beats per minute the entire time.

By explaining the science behind the illusions, Get High Now makes great fodder for your science class. It also makes the idea of going to a site called “Get High Now” sound less dubious.