Why does parallel Lines appear to meet in the distance?

Answer 1

If they tend to meet in the distance, the lines have been poorly drawn,

or you have to be more accurate when making/constructing them :)

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No !

Parallel lines do appear to meet in the distance. That's the whole basis of the

perspective effect in drawing.

-- Stand on a railroad track, between the rails, and look at the track-bed in the

distance. The two rails appear to draw together as they get farther from you.

-- Same if you stand in the middle of a straight road . . . it appears to get narrower

and the curbs draw together as they get farther from you.

-- During a meteor shower, the individual meteors are parallel to each other, but

to us, they appear to radiate from a single point in the sky.

The reason is how our brains judge linear dimensions ... strictly by the ANGLE that

our eyes measure between two points. Anything that fills a smaller angle is perceived

as being a shorter distance. Distant people and airplanes subtend smaller angles and

appear to be smaller than nearby ones, although we learn to compensate for that.

The angle that parallel lines subtend at our eyes becomes smaller as they get farther

away, which our brains interpret as a shorter linear distance between them. Turn it

around, and when you draw a picture of parallel lines, you can make them appear to

recede in the distance by drawing them sloped toward each other.