A New Version of the Beuchet Chair Illusion

The Beuchet Chair is a powerful and highly popular optical illusion. The illusion involves two reasonably large pieces of apparatus: an oversized chair seat and four normal-sized chair legs. When properly arranged and viewed from a precise location, a person standing on the seat appears to be much smaller than they actually are. Although compelling, the illusion is relatively challenging and expensive to construct, requires a large amount of space to stage, and is not especially portable. Here, I outline a new version of the illusion that just involves a small piece of cardboard, a cloth, and a tripod. This new version costs almost nothing to create, is highly portable, and requires far less space than the original.