Mathematics and image editing

Technology has given a magical toy in the hands of teachers and students to explore and learn interesting facts with ease. I have been exploring the internet based tools and softwares from past 2 years and had deeply felt its power in enriching learning level of students.

In our mathematics laboratory, we have been exploring on mathematics based activities using pictures. It is interesting to note that by using tech tools and softwares , we can do many mathematical experiments with a click of a mouse button. There are image editing tools and online programmes which can add/remove effects to a picture . This can bring in an incredible change in the existing image/picture leading to unusual results. I believe , a teacher or a student must take advantage of this facility . It would surely inculcate in learners the interest in the subject and developing creative skills. May be one day we may find a hidden mathematician.

Here I am sharing some interesting observations

• Transforming a tangram to a curvy tangram. I talked about this experiment in my previous post on image editing.
• Experimenting with illusions is an interesting activity which may be performed easily using image editors. Observe the given pictures... This is an optical illusion

In the above picture ,there are pink squares bounded by white and green squares. The presence of white and green boundaries around pink squares has changed the tone of pink shade. It is observed that when pink squares are bounded by green squares then they appear to be darker in shade. And when we remove all the green squares then we found that all the pink coloured squares are of same tone.

I was astonished to see this illusion. But you know, I wanted to try it for some other colour combinations. Manually, it is quite impossible to check on drawing, shading and then observing. So, an idea came to my mind to try using image editing tools. And here is the result...

I first tried with turning all pink squares to orange.

then to blue and so on I experimented with 5 different colours.The I tried to remove the green squares using eraser tool and got actually verified the result. In the figure given below, observe the part from where the green squares are completely removed. You will find that tone of blue colour is same . Ans there is a change in the tone of blue shade in the portion which is bounded by green squares.
The following pictures are edited using irfan view , a wonderful image editing tool. I took the following picture. I wanted to change the green coloured squares to some other colour to verify the experiment. Through Irfan view it was made posible. I edited the picture successfully.

Here is the result. I was amazed to see the fact that when green squares are turned to black, then also the illusion effect in yellow squares was there.Using a swap colour option, just by a click of mouse button, Yellow coloured squares are changed to blue. Exploring and learning the wonderful facts using technology is an enriching experience for me.

Check this one which I posted on Figures Speak.