The video demonstrates the existence of a 3D printed infinite staircase, also known as the Escherian staircase or Penrose steps, based on the idea of a staircase in which a person could climb or descend. The staircase has four 90-degree turns forming a continuous loop, allowing a person to climb or descend. The video also explores the possibility of a staircase violating physics and basic logic by looping back into itself.
The Escherian Stairwell, a variation on the Penrose triangle, is a two-dimensional depiction of a staircase in which the stairs make four 90-degree turns as they ascend or descend. As a person walks up the stairs, they work against gravity, resulting in more gravitational potential energy. The perceptual dissonance may be due to our brain’s predilection for the illusion of a staircase looping back into itself.
The video also explores the concept of Captain Disillusion, a film and video that documents the existence of the Escherian Stairwell. The staircase is built in building 7 in Rochester, and the perceptual dissonance may be due to our brain’s predilection for illusions. The video provides a new clearer version of the Escherian Stairwell, highlighting its potential for awe-inspiring and awe-inspiring experiences.
📹 How Does a Real-Life Escherian Staircase Work?
In this video I show you a 3d printed infinite staircase also called an Escherian staircase after M.C Escher. I talk about how this …
📹 This Infinite Staircase is real, but it’s not what you think..
The other day I ran into a sketch of an “impossible staircase”, but nothing is impossible, not even making infinite stair cases …
One of the best “real time” demonstrations of this Escher phenomenon was in the 1986 film The Name of the Rose, a Medieval mystery starring the great actor Sean Connery. In it he and his protege discover a hidden library in an old monastery that can be reached only by climbing stairs that cannot possibly exist since, at one point, they are facing each other on stairs on opposite sides of the tower–and they are each upside down to the other. Once they are in the library, they go down stairs from one room to another only to eventually end up in the original room! Quite a fascinating section of film that has never (to my knowledge) been duplicated since. If you’ve never seen the film, it is well worth finding and perusal. The key is whether you can solve the mystery before they do!
I would love for someone to make a real-life staircase like this. I’ve climbed 30 flights of stairs one time, and felt just like this. None of the floors have the number from the stairwell, so it felt like it gone on for infinity. The real question is, would a person know they were on an infinite staircase? Or the brains eventually tell them, something isn’t right here? Much like how people get lost and end up doubling back where they started.
This was an amazing article! I’ve known about escher since high school but I’ve never thought about it in a mathematical and least of all physical sense. I know the physical model shown isn’t exactly what people intuitively think of as “escher space” but it’s as impressive as the ames room illusion.would love to see more articles like this. Thanks!
I loved how the all right-angles “triangle” worked only on a sphere. I remember seeing this for the first time when I took non-Euclidean geometry in college. Blew my mind! That’s exactly the same technique pilots use when navigating from point to point on the Earth. Yes, they DO fly in a straight line (if seen from above)–but one that follows the curve of the Earth. It’s called a Great Circle route. (Sorry to disappoint you, flat-earthers!)
just as i have thought previously when i saw the article-it is it’s not possible. there must be some physical solution why the walker ended up in the same spot as the beginning. imagine he is already above the starting point because he is going up the stair, then suddenly he arrives in the same starting point. there must be some trick. the walker does not realize that he was going down when he crosses that landing.
If you try you could do this with a Rubik’s cube even 4*4 ones but it has 4 different staircases that are connected and always go up or down which is so cool All of the things you have to do is to grab one of the faces and move each column slightly up and turn to the right face and do it again (it will show better on 4*4 ones) after you finished look at the top face it’s a continues loop.
The dropoff is one of the very good reasons why the traffic goes continuously to where you started. But I’m still not satisfied. I mean it’s just too stiff. Unless maybe you went there and felt the floor going down. The whole explanation is cool and believable, but it’s still missng one thing. If you happen to visit the area, you should get a spirit level tool and get every steps of the ladder and the surfaces. Because i think it’s not just a dropoff that made it. I think the whole construction is tilted a little to the right, if you take a bottle of water and lay it on the ground, would it draw more water to right?
Since I live in the real world, the equivocation of the words “up” the stairs or “down” the stairs is misleading. Even the “slope” has steps if you look closely. As for the “right angles” or “straight lines on the sphere again they are equivocations o their meanings. The line on the sphere is on a curved surface obviously or it would not work otherwise. At the slope end of the staircase the Lego man has to go up or down in opposition to the up the stairs or down the stairs. My two cents.
I guess the 3D staircase which you are using is the wrong one because the steps always need to either go just up or down at a point your steps doing the opposite of what it needs to do, Kindly look into that Action Lab. Mistakes happen, its fine coz we are humans 🙂 Anyways, you came with a bang Action Lab, I always love your articles and look forward to them 🙂
I usually really like this website, but the presentation was way too obvious. He should take this article down. Just my opinion. Edited: upon close inspection, there was a flaw in the design. The slope side should have been painted black at the corner of the white wall. That corner screams downward slope. The angle on the bottom corner should have been painted white. That whole section is off
Here is GPT3’s explanation of why our brains get tricked into this optical illusion. In an Escherian staircase, also known as a Penrose staircase or impossible staircase, the brain’s perception is tricked due to a combination of factors involving depth perception and visual cues. Our brain relies on various visual cues to interpret the three-dimensional world around us, but in the case of an Escherian staircase, these cues are manipulated to create an optical illusion. “One important cue our brain uses is linear perspective, which is the convergence of parallel lines as they recede into the distance. In a typical staircase, the lines of the steps converge as they extend into the distance, indicating a change in depth and a decline. However, in an Escherian staircase, the lines of the steps are cleverly arranged in such a way that they appear to be parallel, even though they are not. This manipulation of perspective tricks our brain into perceiving the steps as being on the same plane, rather than descending. Another factor is the use of ambiguous or conflicting visual information. In an Escherian staircase, the visual cues provided by the elements in the scene can be contradictory. For example, the position of the handrails, the alignment of the steps, and the overall structure of the staircase can all create conflicting depth cues. These conflicting cues confuse the brain’s ability to accurately perceive the depth and orientation of the staircase. Overall, the brain’s perception of the steep decline in an Escherian staircase is undermined by the clever arrangement of visual cues that suggest a different interpretation.
Not a bad attempt. But escherian stairs are impossible in reality even when seen using a certain angle as it is actually four stairs instead of two. So the drop will be visible and becomes unworkable because you cannot have a stairs that is going up while angled down. It is just a beautiful piece of artwork on paper.
I’d like to state that Marvel had the doppler effect in one of there movies when rocket and thor (not 100% thor was with him at the time tho) where going so some planet and where going close to the speed of light, thay hade the affect happen to them and it distorted there vision with the light spectrum and with their reality, it’s cool that thay added that to the movie