Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Having A Ball With Chemistry Magic Tricks

By Barb Church


Remember how you felt as a kid when that funny guy in the clown outfit reached behind your ear and produced a quarter out of thin air? You couldn't believe your eyes, and that feeling of fun and wonder still runs through your mind every time you see a magic show. Well, that feeling is not reserved just for you; the majority of people also feel that way when they think of magic and the question hangs in the air at every show of "what the heck just happened".

Well, you think magic has a real pull for people and holds them in awe; what about chemistry? The typical man on the street could probably tell you what table salt was made of, and possibly water; but on average, his knowledge of chemistry is almost nil. Think back about all those hours you spent sitting in the chemistry lab in your local high school looking at those forbidding bottles of death-dealing chemicals, and acids, and glassware and tubing; and wondering silently if you would live through your exposure to all this until the end of the semester. So, take that wondering and bewildered feeling that chemistry lab produced and combine that with the awe of magic, and wow! What a winner we have here with chemistry magic tricks.

Magic of all sorts has always fascinated people and the feeling it produces is world wide in its appeal. The memories that most people have of magic shows; whether a little Mom and Pop show on the street corner or a large professional show with smoke and mirrors; is the same. It is always a fun time and leaves a positive feeling whenever they think of the subject, from the time they were little kids until the present time.

Doing the most simple to the most difficult types of chemistry magic tricks can really be a blast for you if you know what you are doing and don't generate a mushroom cloud over the area of the tricks or blow the windows out of the room while you are trying to perform them. Browse the Internet for ideas for tricks that you can perform easily and there are many sites that offer chemistry magic tricks of all degrees of difficulty, and in this way you can have a unique repertoire of tricks to perform.

Kids are the best audience in the universe because they believe almost anything you tell them; and because they don't have the worldliness or experiences to know what it is you are doing, when you make something burn out of thin air, or make something turn red by just swooping your hand around; they are open mouthed and excited as all get out because they can't make heads or tails out of what they just saw. Some fun chemistry magic tricks for kids would be easy ones to perform, like making slime out of glue, water, and borax powder. Or building a volcano cone on a table with hidden piles of baking soda and detergent inside, and add some water with your abracadabra ingredient-vinegar-- and lo and behold; the volcano "erupts" blowing out all kinds of foam that makes the kids turn inside out with glee.

The kids are certainly fun when it comes to performing chemistry magic tricks, but don't shortchange the adults either. Most adults are kids at heart, and don't really know all that much about chemistry; so you have free rein when it comes to combining some of your favorite magic tricks with a touch of chemistry and just flooring the audience with your ability to pull off these simple tricks. Here's one trick you can do that will wow the audience and takes very little expertise to pull off. It's called the Burning Dollar Bill trick and it takes very few ingredients to perform. All you need is a dollar bill, some water mixed with alcohol, and a match. The bill is soaked in the alcohol/water mix before you start, and the idea is that because alcohol and the cloth material of the dollar bill have different points in temperature at which they will burn; the alcohol will burn much more readily before the dollar bill catches fire, and you have the water as a wedge between the flash point of the alcohol and the bill. You present the damp bill and light it; the alcohol burns and engulfs the bill in flames, but the bill does not burn. You blow out the flames and eureka, the bill doesn't even have a mark on it. Your audience bows in admiration at your magical expertise.

For some of the most fun you have ever had in your life, and to produce some really clever chemistry magic tricks that range in difficulty from really thought provoking and hard to reproduce; to those that a chimpanzee could do----try searching the Internet for ideas and lists of tricks you could do for an audience. They have been proven to be a good source of entertainment and can provide hours of fun for both the performer and the audience combined.




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