Artists use perspective to more accurately depict objects in space, and architects, sculptors and even astronomers successfully apply their knowledge of the skyline to work on diagrams, drawings and graphs. What is the horizon line and how does it affect our perception of reality?
It is difficult for a small child to explain why a tree that grows behind a fence needs to be drawn less than a small bush next to a house. If you are going to explain to your child what perspective and horizon line are, you must first prepare him for the perception of this information. Explain that the place where the sky meets the ground is called the horizon. And since our earth is in the shape of a ball, we cannot see everything in the distance. The further away the object, the less clearly it is visible to us.
If the child asks why this is so, a visual experiment can be performed using a large round object. Take an impressive ball of yarn, watermelon, or round melon and stick a match or toothpick into it. Show your child that if you look at it from very close, it remains large, but if you turn your improvised Earth so that the match moves away to the other side, it will start to seem much smaller from the same angle of view.
Of course, the horizon is not always visible. It is clearly visible only in a completely open area: in the steppe, the open sea or in the desert. By the way, few people think about the fact that if you observe the horizon line without the slightest obstacle, it will have the shape of a circle - that is, it will go around the beholder in a circle from all sides. And this is connected, again, with the shape of our planet. The child can be shown this with the example of a watermelon or a ball. Place an object on the plane of the ball and ask the child to imagine that he is standing in the center of a small earth. It is not difficult to outline the boundaries of their possessions and consider that they also have the shape of a circle; further a person simply will not see anything, since the edges begin to bend down.
Of course, the horizon line is actually an optical illusion. The sky and the earth do not converge, and if we move forward or go up all the time, the line, which we consider the horizon from the starting point, will rise, opening us an ever greater view. It seems so obvious to adults that they stop thinking about it and often get lost trying to answer simple questions from children. Nevertheless, an understanding of the basics of orientation on the terrain and the principles of the movement of the sun and planets in the sky is instilled in a child at an early school or even preschool age and remains with him for life.
The skyline is ghostly, but this does not prevent it from being a guiding star for travelers, a source of inspiration for artists and poets and a muse for restless seekers of truth who have just started going to school.