“Impossible waterfall” Movie

From Michael’s “Visual Phenomena & Optical Illusions”

“mcwolles”, a German design student, created this brilliant object in 2011. It is a wooden replica of the water path from Eschers lithograph “Waterfall” from 1961. If you watch this real-life movie, you will see water running upwards and driving a water mill…

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Movie hosted here with mcwolles’ kind permission. I exerpted and cropped the rendition as seen on his YouTube page. There you can also catch a glimpse of himself. Talk of a genius in a garage!

Of course, there are tricks to it, actually two.
First, the shape only appears “impossible” from one single view angle. The basic impossible shape is composed of two Penrose triangles. I mentioned the close interaction of Escher and the Penroses on my earlier presentation of the “impossible” movie “Halluci”.
Second, there is a trick to the waterflow. While I have a strong suspicion, I will not disclose it here until the creator does so himself in his forthcoming “making of”.

Source

mcwolles’ YouTube page

M. C. Escher’s original image is presented and discussed on Wikipedia.