Gao Guangyan's Impossible Objects

- temporary page -

Introduction

Impossible objects - they are strange puzzles that make you think. They are something like magic tricks, but they are not because there is no performer. Also, it is not a mechanical puzzle in a sense that you don't need to manipulate or play around with it to solve it. However they have a puzzling quality (like magic), and the puzzle is to figure out how they were made. You have probably see before one of the oldest type of impossible objects - the ship in a bottle. Nowadays, there are many types of impossible objects.

In early 2004, I came across a website full of impossible objects. I thought they were really interesting and I was fascinated. After hard thinking, I figured them out and now I make my own puzzles. Some people love them, some don't, but they are, really quite intriguing.

Impossible Bottles

The earliest form (most probably) of impossible bottles would be the classic ship in the bottle. Impossible bottles contain objects that are bigger than the mouth of the bottle, and at first glance would look impossible to put in.

This section showcases the impossible bottles I have made myself.

Some of the common, yet silly answers and questions I get:

  1. "Nice photo manipulation"

  2. "You heated the bottle, neck and stuffed the things inside"

  3. "You cut open the bottle"

  4. "You cut up the objects and glued them back inside"

  5. "It's an optical illusion"

Spend some time thinking about them. :-) I assure you all bottles are not modified, cut open or anything. They are standard off the shelf type bottles from the supermarker. To tell you the truth, everything goes through the neck. The bottle has not be tampered with in any way at all, and all objects in the bottle are still usable.

The First Jar

The first impossible object I made. The bottle is a blueberry juice bottle, and the neck is around 4cm wide. There is a full deck of cards in the casing in the bottle.

If you break the bottle, you can even start playing cards.

Trapped Marble

The marble is trapped.. or is it not?

The wooden dowel just fits the neck, and there is a stainless steel bolt and nut through a hole drilled through the wooden rod.

 

Can you figure them out?

 

Under construction.

(c) Gao Guangyan 2004 Impossible Objects.