Magical Experiments: Scientific Amusements to Entertain and Instruct

By Arthur Good

A rare book that feels equally of its time and timeless, this collection of vintage magazine articles presents simple hands-on experiments that seem as much like parlor tricks as they do scientific discoveries. The illusions introduce a range of principles, including centrifugal force, magnetism, and atmospheric pressure. Employing such common household items as corks, bottles, eggs, and soap, the feats are delightfully easy to conduct.
More than 150 experiments, each accompanied by a charming period engraving, promise to amuse and astonish viewers. Stunts include making an egg waltz and a banana peel itself, balancing a plate on the point of a needle and a cup of coffee on a knife blade, changing water into wine and back again, and scores of other exploits. Created by French engineer and science educator Arthur Good, these experiments are regarded as the foundations of the modern approach to science education.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Release date: Jun 12, 2019
• ISBN: 9780486840703

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Bibliographical Note

This Dover edition, first published in 2019, is an unabridged republication of the work originally published as Magical Experiments, or Science in Play by David McKay, Publisher, Philadelphia, in 1894. Please note that the experiments in this book should be undertaken with adult supervision and the materials and apparatus should be used only as instructed. The publisher is not responsible for the safety of those performing the activities in this book and accepts no liability for any damage or injury that may arise in connection with the publication of this title.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Tit, Tom, author.

Title: Magical experiments: scientific amusements to entertain and instruct / Arthur Good ; translated by Camden Curwen and Robert Waters.

Other titles: Science amusante. English

Description: Mineola, New York : Dover Publications, 2019.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019002598 | ISBN 9780486834207 (paperback) | ISBN 0486834204

Subjects: LCSH: Scientific recreations. | Magic tricks. | BISAC: SCIENCE / Experiments & Projects. | SCIENCE / General. | GAMES / Magic.

Classification: LCC GV1547 .G64 2019 | DDC 793.8—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019002598

Manufactured in the United States by LSC Communications

83420401 2019

www.doverpublications.com

TO MY SON JOHNNIE.

My dear little boy :

Among the experiments contained in this book, many are simple pastimes meant for the recreation of young and old, assembled round the family table.

Others, on the contrary, being of a really scientific character, are designed to introduce the reader to the study of Physics, that marvellous science to which we owe the discovery of the steam-engine, the telephone, the phonograph, and many other wonders—a science which, there can be little doubt, holds in reserve many other miracles for man.

The whole of these experiments, whether simple or complex, may be performed without any special apparatus whatever, consequently without the least expense. Our improvised laboratory is composed, as you will perceive, of such articles as kitchen utensils, corks, matches, glasses, knives, forks, and plates—in fact, such things as every house, the humblest in the land, possesses.

In dedicating this book to you, I trust it may prove a pleasant souvenir, in the days to come, of the happy moments we passed together in working these simple wonders, and in constructing the homely apparatus used in our MAGICAL EXPERIMENTS.

Your affectionate father,

ARTHUR GOOD ("TOM TIT").

Paris, 1st of January, 1890.

CONTENTS

Preface

Experiments in Physics

The Plate on the Point of the Needle

The Egg that will Stand up

One Way of Halving a Pear

How to Pierce a Pin with a Needle

The Housekeeper's Terror

How to Pierce a Nickel with a Needle

The Diving Bell

A Bottle, or an Acrobat?

The Bottle in Peril

The Barrel and the Bottle ; or, The Automatic Cellarman

Eruption of Vesuvius

Water Changed into Wine

The Champagne Devil

The Intelligent Fish

A Remarkable Candlestick

How to Weigh a Letter with a Broomstick

Soap Bubbles and Carbonic Acid Gas

The Camphor Scorpion

Hydraulic Turntable of Nuts

The Revolving Siphon

The Miniature Steamship

The Bottle Cannon

The Paper Swimming Fish

The Power of the Breath

The Jumping Coin

The Automatic Butterfly

Centrifugal Force.—Whirling a Glass of Water without Spilling a Drop

The Waltzing Egg

The Pressure of the Atmosphere

The Water Pendulum

Lifting a Glass with the Palm of the Hand

A New Way to Empty a Glass

The Metamorphosis of a Soap-Bubble

Hung without a Rope

In Water, but not Wet

How to Make Pins and Needles Float

Rotation of the Earth

How to Float Corks Vertically

The Dancing Jack in the Looking-Glass

An Eye in the Back of the Head

New Chinese Shadows

Theatricals in a Mirror

The Living Shadow

The Disappearing Gold Piece

Complementary Colors

The Devil in Green

The Tricolored Star

The Spinning Pin

The Family Lottery

The Broken Looking-Glass

Stage Equilibrists

The Electrified Envelope

Lamp-Glass, or Electric Machine?

Experiments in Primary Electro-Magnetism

The Punishment of Tantalus

Butting the Wall

A Very Awkward Broomstick

The Five Straw Trick

To Lift Fifteen Matches with One

The Bent Match Problem

The Infernal Machine

The Magic Javelin

How to Make a Lamp Chimney Smoke a Cigarette

The Pyramid of Glasses

The Triplet Glasses

The Bottle on the Keys

The Improvised Plate Support

A Pair of Scales made out of Threads

The Steelyard Balance

Candlestick and Watch-Stand

The Magic Ball

A Novel Vaporizer

The Blown-out Candle Re-lighted

Unconscious Movements

The New Shadowgraphy

Gravity

The Obedient and the Disobedient Egg

The Mannikins

The Bird on the Branch

A Rolling Body goes Up-hill

Foucault's Pendulum

Equilibrium of Superimposed Fluids

Oil Sauce to Everybody's Tatste

The Egg in Salt Water

The Ghost of a Lump of Sugar

The Microbe Bottle Imp

Density of Carbonic Acid Gas

The Candle in the Lamp Chimney

How to make a Banana peel Itself

The Jet of Water in a Vacuum

The Revenge of the Danaides

The Intermitting Fountain

Automatic Drinking-Fountain for Fowls

Wine Spouting from Water

Wine Changed to Water

The Cup of Tantalus

Centrifugal Force

The Flattening of the Earth at the Poles.—Its Rotundity at the Equator

How to Distinguish at Sight a Hard-boiled Egg from a Raw One

Gold Washing

Capillarity

The Greedy Matches

Russian Mountains

Elasticity and Compressibility of Gases

The Compressed-Air Pistol

The Shooting-Tube

The Tractable Balloon

The Jumping Coin

How Not to Blow out the Candle

Heat

The Broken Bottle

The Sliding Railway

A Hammer Made of Water

An Improvised Hygroscope

Acoustics

The Musical Glass

Breaking a Glass with the Voice

Electricity

The Magical Arrow

The Electroscope

Rotation of a Horizontal Wheel before a Magnet

Optics

Reflection of Light on the Surface of Transparent Bodies

The Magical Box

Double Convex and Double Concave Lenses

Cutting a Thread Hung in a Bottle

The Wish-Bone Experiment

Making the Bird enter the Cage

Moving Shadows

Practical Geometry

Lineal Drawing without Instruments

Superposable Figures

The Five-pointed Star

The Square of the Hypothenuse

Tracing an Oval with an Ordinary Compass

The Surface of the Sphere

Amusing Feats

The Knife-Grinder

The Scissors Feat

The Enervator

An Awkward Fix

The Floating Candle

The Eatable Night-Light

The Smoker's Illusion

Cutting Glass with a Pair of Scissors

The Coin that cannot be Removed

Effaceable Ink

A Modern Catapult

Finger Exercises

Fantastic Soap-Bubbles

Crocodiles' Tears

The Traitorous Glass

Little Feats of Amateurs

Japanese Kites

The Automatic Extinguisher

Illustrated Candles

The Nut-Cracker

Construction of the Lily of the Valley

The Horse-Chestnut as a Night-Light

The Hypnotized Egg

The Dancing-Jacks

Index

PREFACE.

To the young person who wishes to make himself agreeable and entertaining in company, this book will be one of the most helpful in literature. It will show him not only how to do things by which he can render himself more entertaining than the best talker or the best joker in the company, but will reveal to him a hundred things by which he can amuse and astonish everybody he knows. For the experiments here displayed are not only entertaining, but instructive ; not only amusing, but surprising ; not only attractive to the young man and the maiden, but to the old man and the matron. By means of the simplest and commonest objects, always at hand, the reader can illustrate some of the most wonderful things in science, and convey valuable instruction while amusing his audience and creating a feeling of admiration for the amusement-maker.

To the teacher who wishes to create in his scholars an interest in science, no book can be of greater assistance. It will enable him practically to illustrate and enforce scientific principles, and render his instructions as interesting as an Arabian tale.

My share of the book consists in the translation of the latter half, and the revision and correction of the whole. The late Mr. Camden Curwen, at the time of his death, left the work but half finished, when it was placed in my hands. Mr. Curwen has done his part of the work well, and my hope is that the critics will not consider mine much inferior.

As to the author, Mr. Arthur Good, his work speaks for itself. Not only his skill and ability, but the genial and kindly nature of the man, crop out at every page.

ROBERT WATERS.

17 TROY STREET,

JERSEY CITY HEIGHTS, N. J.

MAGICAL EXPERIMENTS;

OR,

SCIENCE IN PLAT.

EXPERIMENTS IN PHYSICS.

The Plate on the Point of the Needle.

EVERYBODY has seen the jugglers in the circus spinning plates, and even dishes, on a pointed stick. For the most part, the plates they use are made of wood or metal, and their equilibrium is due to centrifugal force, which will fail just as soon as the rotation is too weak to overcome the force of gravity.

But here is a way to balance a china plate on the point of a needle, and even to cause it steadily to spin upon this delicate support.

Cut a couple of corks down the middle, through the long axes, and in the extremity of the four halves thus obtained insert as many forks, inclined to the smooth sides of the corks you have just cut at a little less than a right angle. Place these four corks, as in the illustration, round the rim of the platter, at equal distances from one another, and see that the teeth of the forks are in contact with the rim, to prevent them swaying like so many pendulums.

The little system we have now constructed is capable of being balanced, even firmly so to speak, upon the point of a needle, whose eye-end is buried in the cork of an upright wine-bottle. With a little care to prevent the plate slipping, you may even cause it safely to rotate at a fair rate of speed, which, when once set in motion, will continue for a long while, because the friction at the point of contact is almost nil.

The Egg that will Stand up.

Fix two forks firmly in a cork, as in the illustration, observing that they are of equal weight and at equal angles with the perpendicular ; gently hollow out the lower portion of the cork with a sharp penknife, so that it may fit with some exactness one of the ends of the egg. Now poise the other end of the egg carefully on the edge of the neck of the bottle ; see that the egg is in the vertical position, and after a few tentative shakes, not letting go of it at once, you can ascertain that the whole is in a state of equilibrium, an effect that is obtained, of course, by our thus placing the centre of gravity below the point of support.

One Way of Halving a Pear.

How are we to manage to get the knife into the exact position under a pear, suspended as high as possible by a thread from the ceiling, so that the fruit shall fall precisely on the blade as soon as the thread that held it has been burned? We shall not require a plumb-line in order to manage this ; there is an easier way—to dip the fruit in a glass of water, which we put out of the way when it has served its purpose. A few drops falling from the fruit will spatter one particular spot on the chair or table underneath, on which we put a private mark. These preparations must be made in secret, so that when the spectators assemble they find nothing but the pear suspended, and know nothing of the drop of water that fell, which is our little friendly guide to success in this pretty experiment.

At the anticipated moment, you place your knife upon the spot that you have marked, and the pear will infallibly split itself in exact halves upon your knife-blade.

Or you may arrange the experiment as in the picture, with two knives instead of one, causing a sufficient number of drops of water to fall, till you have ascertained the exact spot at which the blades should cross each other. The pear will cut itself into quarters, which you gather on the plate you have placed in position underneath, and present to the spectators in token of your skill.

How to Pierce a Pin with a Needle.

The pin is thrust half way into a cork, from which hang suspended, as in the illustration, a couple of penknives of equal weight. Should they happen to be of different sizes, you can maintain the equipoise by varying the angle of the blades. Balance the head of the pin on your forefinger, and make sure, by swaying the knives gently to and fro, that they will hold themselves horizontal. Next balance the body of the pin on the point of a needle whose eye is run into another cork in an upright wine-bottle. By blowing on the cork that holds the knives, you will set your little system rotating on the point of the needle. Further, the needle, being harder than the pin, which is only brass, will penetrate it, and bore a hole, which, if the experiment be continued long enough, will traverse it completely, to the astonishment of the beholder.

The Housekeeper's Terror.

The problem here is to balance a cup of coffee on the point of a knife, upright. The apparatus necessary is extremely simple ; you will find it at hand upon the table—with a cork and a fork you have what is wanted for the purpose—not forgetting a little address upon the operator's part.

Insert the cork in the handle of a coffee-cup, vigorously enough to fix it pretty tight, but not so tight as to snap the handle off. Stick the fork into the cork, straddling the handle of the cup, two prongs on one side, two on the other—unless it be a three-pronged fork —gently inclining the handle of the fork toward the bottom of the cup.

The centre of gravity of the system being thus successfully lowered, place