Is It a Cube? Common Visual Perception of Cuboid Drawings

Autor: Miklós Hoffmann, László Németh
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2021
Předmět:
Zdroj: Education Sciences, Vol 11, Iss 10, p 577 (2021)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 2227-7102
DOI: 10.3390/educsci11100577
Popis: A cube is one of the most fundamental shapes we can draw and can observe from a drawing. The two visualization methods most commonly applied in mathematics textbooks and education are the axonometric and the perspective representations. However, what we see in the drawing is really a cube or only a general cuboid (i.e., a polyhedron with different edge lengths). In this experimental study, 153 first-year ( 19–20-year-old) students, two-thirds of them being female, were asked to interactively adjust a cuboid figure until they believe what they see is really a cube. We were interested in how coherently people, who are actually students of arts studies and engineering with advanced spatial perception skills in most cases, evaluate these drawings. What we have experienced is that for most people there is a common visual understanding of seeing a cube (and not a general cuboid). Moreover, this common sense is surprisingly close to the conventions applied in axonometric drawings, and to the theoretical, geometric solution in the case of three-point perspective drawings, which is the most realistic visualization method.
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