The wife and I were watching an NCIS LA episode the other day and a guy got thrown off a 20 story building. It looked a long way down. (Not sure of course if it indeed was 20 stories). Anyway in case I've got it wrong, 20 stories is 200 feet right? That's longest width of my biggest pond but it sure doesn't look like 20 stories long. Why the illusion?

Ever decide to swim across a body of water and it ends up being a lot farther than it looked?

I used to live in Bavaria, Germany as a kid in mountainous territory. I remember thinking one particular mountain was very close but once one headed in that direction is was indeed much much farther away.

I've also noticed two lakes of the same size in acreage can look vastly different in size, apparently due to the topography around them.

Thoughts?

Cecil, sometimes you make me wanna just say......Huh?

I'm really lousy at judging distance, especially vertical.

Optical illusion, Cecil. Objects appear closer when viewed horizontally than when viewed vertically. Note the huge apparent size of a rising full moon as opposed to the much smaller seeming full moon when overhead.

The Ponzo effect.

Hey, what's this green stuff in my pond???

Caution: objects in mirror are closer than they appear.

I can tell you for sure, looking down vertically is a hell of a lot higher than looking up verticaly the same distance.

You should ha ve posted that BEFORE Rex backed up.

Rex has made the unfortunate decision to align himself against the GSA. At the Pond Boss conference, his mirror warning might have been altered to say...

Caution: objects in mirror are much farther away than they appear.