Page 102 - Think 3. Teacher's Book B3+
P. 102
Unit 9
It’s a mystery! Reading
Warmer
Look up some less well-known
optical illusions online and present READING
them to the class. Can students say 1 SPEAKING Look at the pictures. 3 Read the article again. Find and match 1–6 with a–f.
SPEAKING
what they see and how they work? What do you see in them? Discuss your 1 started a family argument a the brain
answers in pairs.
2
b researchers
sold the dress
2 9.05 Read and listen to the 3 became an internet sensation c scientists
article. Why do you think the photo of 4 set up a study d the retailer
1 Check/clarify: optical illusion. the dress went viral? 5 studied the photo e the dress
6 makes decisions about colours f the photo of the dress
2 9.05 Tell students not to try
to understand every word, but
It goes without
to focus on getting a general saying that people
THE
THE
understanding of the article. THE always been popular in books and
love optical illusions – they’ve
3 1 e 2 d 3 f 4 b 5 c 6 a pictures. Now, with social media, we’ve
gone one step further and everyone is
sharing these puzzling illusions. Here’s one
that really went down a storm with people
all round the world.
Culture note
The dress is a photograph that went
viral on 26 February 2015. The photo Is it blue and black, or white blueish) or from
was taken by Cecilia Bleasdale and and gold? Which two colours an electric light
(which is yellowish).
would you go for? This is the
the colour scheme, as seen in the story of how an ordinary dress That’s important, because
photo, caused so much discussion at became an internet sensation. our brain depends on the light to
decide what colour things really are.
You can’t have missed it!
her daughter’s wedding that friend The mother of a bride sent her A group of researchers set up an online
Caitlin McNeill reposted the image daughter a photo of a dress study to find out more. The study went
that she was planning to wear
well, as 8,000 people responded and the
on Tumblr along with the question to the wedding and it started results were interesting. There was a big
about what colour people thought an argument between the difference between ‘larks’, who get up early and
spend a lot of time in daylight, and ‘owls’, who
daughter, her fiancé and their
it was. Within hours, Tumblr had friends. Some of them saw stay up late and are more used to artificial light.
crashed and at its peak the image the dress as white and gold Larks usually saw the dress as white and gold and owls
usually saw it as blue and black.
while others saw it as blue
was getting 14,000 views a second. and black. How weird is that? However, the researchers say that there might have
Twitter also kept crashing because One friend posted the photo been other reasons for the difference. The study showed
of the high volume of traffic. Many on the internet and the social media world went crazy. that it wasn’t important where people lived or what
time of day they viewed the photo. But the size
Within a week, the photo went viral and more
celebrities joined in the discussion, than 10 million tweets mentioned the of their screen made a difference – people
even brands that had nothing dress, using hashtags such as #thedress, who saw the dress on a bigger screen
were more likely to see it as white and
#whiteandgold and #blueandblack.
to do with clothing turned their The retailer confirmed that the gold. Also, women were a bit more
social media to the topic. Although actual colour of the dress was blue likely than men to see it as white and
gold. It seems there’s still a lot to
and black, but the debate went on.
over two-thirds of BuzzFeed users So why did people see the dress learn about how we see colours!
One thing is certain. As a result of
thought that the dress was white and so differently? After reviewing all this attention on social media,
the photo, scientists had some
gold, the retailer, Roman Originals, answers. The photo wasn’t very clear, sales of the dress went up dramatically.
The retailer produced the dress in white
confirmed that it was actually blue so when it was taken the dress could and gold as well as blue and black and they
have been in shadow or in the light. And the
and black. They experienced a lighting may have been natural daylight (which is must have made a lot of money!
major surge in sales as a result of
the incident and eventually also 88
produced a one-off version of the
dress in white and gold for charity.
more
Workbook
Reading p86, Ex.1–4
T88 It’s a mystery! | Unit 9
