Welcome back to PRISM, the SCISOC newsletter! With the end of the term fast approaching us, SCISOC is happy to present another newsletter! This week, we welcome the incoming Executive team of 2021, and we also take a look at the runner ups for our Writing Competition in the SCISOC Report. For this week's Fun Corner, we take a deep dive into optical illusions and how they work. With that being said, let's get into it! |
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Annual General Meeting Last Friday came about the SCISOC 2020 AGM, and with it, the outgoing of the 2020 team. This year has had many ups and downs, as well as what we’d call many a victory for SCISOC as we continued to strive towards our very best by continuously engaging with and building up our community, and we did our best to celebrate and acknowledge this during the AGM. We’re also proud to announce that with the conclusion of the AGM, we now have our incoming 2021 SCISOC Executive team! President: Nathan King Vice-President of Externals: Charlotte Chan Vice-President of Socials: Rainbo Tsui Vice-President of Marketing: Jason Tan Vice-President of Digital Media: Aileen Heal Vice-President of IT/Publications: Sylvan Tam Secretary: Keiran Phillips Treasurer: Madhu Senthilkumar Arc Delegate: Ryan Shi Congratulations to the incoming 2021 SCISOC Executive team, and we look forward towards what next year will bring us! |
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SCISOC Writing Competition With the conclusion of the Writing Competition in last fortnight’s newsletter, we announced our winner David Bee Olmedo and his piece “The Hall is Empty”. However, we thought it’d be amiss not to showcase some of our runner ups and their stories, and so without further ado, here they are! |
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Our first runner up is the short story “The Slow Echo of Time”, written by Sylvan Tam, a fairly short piece about time using music as a metaphor, and that absolutely wasn’t written in a mad dash of frenzy at 6am in the morning. Our second runner up is another short story named “The Way”, written by Harry Silver (or actual alias Nathan King). Nathan, the Publications and IT director at the time, thought it’d be hilarious to prank the team by submitting his short story under a fake name and force the team to (unknowingly and unwillingly) critically analyse his writing for a change. The jury’s still out on whether the rest of the team agree with him. Once again, we’d like to say a final congratulations to our winner of the competition, and one last big thank you to all of our participants. Reading all of your submissions was really fun, and it was great to gain an insight into the talent and skills of the SCISOC community. For more chances to participate in competitions like these, keep up with our fortnightly newsletters, or join our Facebook Group and like our Page to be notified of any other upcoming events! |
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| My curiosity about optical illusions didn’t start until recently, but before I dive into that, let me tell you a quick story. Here I was, sitting at the docks in Darling Harbour at some hour that’s later than I care to mention. My friends were busy goofing off in front of the camera, but I was more than content to just sit on the ground and freeze to death slowly. That is, until the Ferris wheel caught my attention. |
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From where I was sitting on the stony, ice-cold ground, the Ferris wheel was tilted at an angle. It’s nothing too special; not incredibly big, but the lights twinkle in just the right way to capture your attention all the same. And under my watchful gaze, it began to spin slowly again, the new passengers having embarked into their tiny death-trap of a carriage. That was the moment I realised I had no idea which way it was spinning. Sure, it looked like it was spinning clockwise, but blink and shake your head hard enough before refocusing, and suddenly it was spinning in the opposite direction, almost like it had been doing that from the beginning of its operation. I couldn’t figure out which way it was turning, and this genuinely bothered me a lot. Enough that I got up from where I’d been comfortably turning into an ice cube and walked the incredibly far distance of 20 metres up to the Ferris wheel so that I could confirm which way it was actually spinning. Of course, this whole experience got me thinking about optical illusions, and I was curious enough to start researching them when I got home. So, let’s start. What is an optical illusion? An optical illusion is something that we perceive differently from what its true image should be. But what exactly causes these optical illusions? This is where it gets truly interesting. Most of the time, the things we’re seeing do actually match up with what reality is presenting itself as. If there are any missing pieces of information from what you can see, however, your brain starts to draw on your previous experiences and frankensteins something that you could perceive as reality. And sometimes, this perceived reality isn’t actually reality at all, but simply an image our brain has taken and warped to fit its own experiences and expectations. Our brain making decisions for us based on our prior experiences is something that happens pretty much daily. For example, if someone with no preconceived notions of dogs were to run in to one, only to have the dog become vicious and attack them, this person would naturally come to fear and avoid dogs. Their brain, drawing from their prior experiences, would draw the conclusion that all dogs must be vicious and will attack them if they get too close. |
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| Of course, that was just a simple example, but the point does remain; based on our past experiences and what’s familiar to us, we’ll learn to draw conclusions when faced with similar situations. We can see this come into effect with this optical illusion here. This image displays two men, one of African descent while the other is of European descent, with their images having been adjusted such that the luminance, contrast and number of pixels were the same. When given to multiple participants, who were then asked to point out which face was darker, participants would respond saying that the face on the left was darker. This answer would persist, no matter the race or implicit social attitude scores of the participants. |
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This is an example of cognitive penetration in visual perception, and it’s really only one type of optical illusion. An illusion more similar to that of the Ferris wheel would be the infamous Spinning Dancer illusion. This illusion can be explained pretty simply; due to the figure being completely blacked out, we can no longer use our depth perception as a visual cue. Some scientists have suggested that the direction in which a person perceives the dancer spinning can suggest which half of their brain is more active, although there is actually no concrete evidence to support this. Either way, it’s still a pretty neat illusion. |
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Illusions are honestly a truly fascinating subject, and still something that many scientists dedicate decades of their lives to research into. When a true understanding for exactly how all optical illusions work has been developed, it could mean potentially massive strides towards understanding how our brains truly function and work. For now, however, we’ll just have to sit around at home and puzzle over the next optical illusion that goes viral. And for all of you who are curious out there; the Darling Harbour Ferris wheel spins clockwise. You’re welcome. |
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UNSW Science Society is proud to announce our continued partnership with GradReady through 2020. GradReady provides GAMSAT Preparation courses for anyone looking to pursue Medicine after they graduate. This process starts earlier than you think, so if you’re studying medical science or just have that passion, check out what they have to offer! |
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