Science Magic Tricks

By Nathan Shalit

This educational, fun-filled book will show you how to dazzle audiences with dozens of fascinating tricks based on scientific principles. Included are more than 50 safe demonstrations easily performed at home or in the classroom with a ping-pong ball, broom, potato, balloon, coins, playing cards, and other common items.
Clear illustrations and simple, easy-to-follow instructions enable you to perform dozens of "tricks" involving mathematics, chemistry, inertia, magnets, optical illusions, and physics. Astound friends and relatives by cutting glass with scissors, inserting a pin in a balloon without popping it, creating a magical doorway out of paper, concocting witch's dust and "wet" fire, practicing the art of secret writing, and successfully accomplishing many other mystifying feats.
Best of all, as you entertain audiences with these eye-popping tricks, you'll be learning important scientific facts and principles. These science magic tricks make learning fun!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Release date: Dec 27, 2012
• ISBN: 9780486157313

Book preview

CITY

How to Be a Mathematical Genius

MAGIC SQUARES

This box of numbers is a magic square. The numbers in any row, straight or diagonal, add up to 15.

You can make it look different by turning the square like this.

Or using it in a mirror image, like this.

Memorize one of these magic squares.

To do your trick, draw an empty nine-box square on a blackboard or paper and ask your audience to call out numbers from 1 to 9 in any order. As they are called out, put them into the correct box. Of course, only you know where to put each number to make a magic square!

When all of the boxes are filled, ask your audience to add up the rows of numbers, and they will see that all the rows add up to 15.

Here is another square where the rows add up to 24. You can memorize this one too.

As above, ask your audience to call out numbers from 4 to 12. Write each number in the correct box of the square as it is called out. When the square is filled, ask your audience to add up the rows. Every row adds up to 24!

Your patter might go something like this: When my mother was pregnant with me, she won a lot of money at a bingo game—enough to pay the doctor for my delivery. This made such an impression on her, that I was born with numbers buzzing through my head. Here is a square with nine empty boxes, etc.

If you really want to make an impression, here is a 25-box square where all the rows add up to 65! If you can memorize it, great. Otherwise you can write it on a tiny piece of paper and hide it in the palm of your hand with a bit of clear tape.

In this square, the horizontal, vertical and two long diagonal rows all add up to 65.

As before, draw your empty magic square on the blackboard and call for numbers from one to twenty-five in random order.

To further implant in the minds of your audience that you are indeed a wizard, repeat the performance, but in your mind first give the square a quarter turn or two and fill in the boxes accordingly. It will look like a completely different magic square which you are able to make to add up to 65 again.

CALENDAR TRICK

You can take any page of a calendar and mark off a square four numbers across and four numbers up and down. The sum of the numbers in the upper left and lower right corners will always equal the sum of the remaining two corners. In the illustration it is 36.

Do this: Circle any number inside the square and cross out all the other numbers in the same row across and the same up-and-down row. Now circle a number you haven’t marked yet and do the same thing. Continue until all the numbers in the marked square are either circled or crossed out. The sum of the circled numbers will be the same as the sum of the four corner numbers—in this case 72.

To do this trick, ask someone in your audience to mark off a 4-x-4 square on a calendar page while you watch. As this is done, be sure to see the numbers in either set of opposite corners. In your head, add them and multiply by two. Write the total on a piece of paper, fold it several times, and hand it to one of your audience for safekeeping.

Now tell the person holding the calendar page to hide it from your view and then to circle numbers and cross out, as described above. When all the numbers have been crossed out and circled, tell someone to add up all the circled numbers; then open your piece of paper, and show everyone that you had predicted the correct answer, in this case—72

Remember, you must be sure to see one set of corner numbers!

Your patter can go something like this: I have magic telepathic perception which enables me to see into the immediate future. I am therefore able to foresee the numbers you will circle and know their total even before you circle them. There is no way you can squirm out of this situation, because I will have perceived it before you do it.

MAGIC ADDITION BOXES

This is a very easy trick to do. It is a trick where you show a square made of many boxes; each box has a number in it, as in the illustration, and is large enough for a penny to fit in it and cover the number.

Ask your audience to cover any number with a penny and cross out all the numbers in line with it in the rows across and down, just as in the Calendar Trick on page 15. Have them repeat this out of your sight until all the numbers are either covered or crossed out. Then announce the sum of all the covered numbers—in this case, 52. When the pennies are removed and the numbers added, everyone will see that you were right!

If you study the square in the illustration for a