antigravity houses and hills
The House of Mystery in the Oregon Vortex, Gold Hill, Oregon, built during
the Great Depression in the 1930s, can claim to be the first "antigravity
house." It spawned many imitators around the United States and in other
parts of the world. Such buildings give rise to some spectacular visual
effects, which seem bewildering until the underlying cause is revealed.
Of course, the visitor guides are not forthcoming about what is really going
and make fantastic claims about magnetic or gravitational anomalies, UFOs,
or other weird and wonderful phenomena. The fact is that all the stunning
effects stem from clever construction and concealment that make, in the
mind of the visitor, an incline seem like a horizontal. All antigravity
houses are built on hills, with a typical incline of about 25°. But
unlike a normal house on the side of a hill, an antigravity house is built
so that its walls are perpendicular to the (inclined) ground. In addition,
the area around the house is surrounded by a tall fence that prevents the
visitor from establishing a true horizontal. Thus compelled to fall back
on experience, the visitor assumes that the floor of the house is horizontal
and that the walls are vertical with respect to Earth's gravity. All the
stunning visual shenanigans follow from this.
As well as human-made antigravity illusions, there are also a number of
remarkable natural locations around the world where gravity seems to be
out of kilter. One example is the "Electric Brae," known locally as Croy
Brae, in Ayrshire, Scotland. This runs the quarter-mile from the bend overlooking
Croy railway viaduct in the west (86 meters above sea-level) to the wooded
Craigencroy Glen (92 meters above level) to the east. While there is actually
a slope of 1 in 86 upward from the bend at the Glen, the configuration of
the land on either side of the road creates the illusion that the slope
runs the other way. The author is among countless folk who have parked their
cars on this stretch of road with the brakes off and been amazed to see
it roll apparently uphill.
Related entry
• distortion
illusion
Related category
• ILLUSIONS
AND IMPOSSIBLE FIGURES
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