Why Distant Objects Look Smaller
▶ DRILLGeorge walks away from Liza and looks smaller and smaller — but he never actually shrinks. The trick is that your eye doesn't measure size, it measures angle: the wedge between the line to his head and the line to his feet. Far away, that wedge gets thin, so he lands on a thinner slice of your eye. That's also why a thumb held close can cover a whole house — or the Moon. Use the Explain it for a kid / a grown-up switch to set the depth.
The big idea — faraway things look small because your eye measures the angle something makes, not its real size. George never shrank; he just fills a thinner slice of Liza's view. That's the secret behind the trick: a tiny thing held close can make the same slice as a giant thing far away — which is how your thumb can cover a whole house, or even the Moon. Funny thing: far away he looks smaller but not darker — he doesn't fade out. Why doesn't he? That's another drill. (No relativity here yet — just light travelling in straight lines. But when something moves near the speed of light, even these angles get bent — that's a drill for later.)