Ambiguous Heart

thingiverse

*will add pictures of object when finished printing* Design of an Ambiguous object for George Mason University's Math 401: Mathematics Through 3D Printing course. Inspired by Kokichi Sugihara, a Japanese mathematics professor who won second place at "the best illusion of the year contest" in 2016. He designed a cylinder illusion where from one perspective the top of the shape looked like a circle and from a 180 degree view it looked like a square. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWfFco7K9v8) This video link can give a visual of the phenomenon. It was my class's task to create a similar illusion with different shapes. For my shape I chose to design a heart where from one angle the shape looks like a heart and from a 180 degree view the design also showed a heart facing the same direction. I created my heart in mathematica. I created the heart with these 3 curves {Sqrt[1/4 - (x + 1/2)^2],, Sqrt[1/4 - (x - 1/2)^2], -1 + Abs[x]} and I took the inverse to flip the heart. In the code I tried to make it easier for myself by assigning curves to variables as shown in the pictures. I worked in two halves as well to make it easier than merged them together on the ultimaker application before printing.