It IS possible to control a coin flip - as shown in the video.
Take-home lesson. If you participate in a coin flip, call it after it's in the air, not before.
Via BoingBoing.
Showing posts with label magic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label magic. Show all posts
12 June 2019
There's an important lesson to learn here
It IS possible to control a coin flip - as shown in the video.
Take-home lesson. If you participate in a coin flip, call it after it's in the air, not before.
Via BoingBoing.
10 November 2018
07 November 2018
Mephisto spiral illusion
It looks like 2 interlocking wire spirals. In your hands, the two spirals seem to wind together or wind apart, completely effortlessly. However when you hand the Mephisto Spiral over to someone else, they find that they cannot replicate the action – the two wire spirals are completely rigid.
Alternatively, by simply moving your hands in one direction, you can make the two spirals appear to unwind, yet however many times you repeat the action, the two spirals never come apart.From another discussion:
For those who still don't get it: the guy is only moving his hands along the rod. He's also rotating the rod at the same time so that the part of the rod that's "coming out" of his hand is also at the same angle, to create the illusion that he's firmly holding the "rods" with his fingers.
15 May 2018
10 July 2017
A card trick anyone can do
Mathematical card tricks are the best ones to learn, because no sleight-of-hand is required. A hat tip to Mark Frauenfelder for creating this video to illustrate the methodology of a clever trick posted at Greg Ross' Futility Closet.
Readers who are math enthusiasts may be able to explain to the rest of us how/why this trick works. I'm satisfied to accept it as magic.
Reposted from 2013 so I can relearn this trick before our upcoming family reunion.
21 February 2016
"Do you mind if I smoke?"
This video was posted in memory of the magician, Tom Mullica, who died this week.
Two trigger warnings seem appropriate. If you are offended by people smoking, definitely give this a pass. Additionally, those who tolerate smoking (or smoke) may find some of the maneuvers gross and disgusting.
30 April 2015
Close-up magic
David Blaine peforms in Harrison Ford's home. The latter appears truly shaken, and I think is not in on the trick. So how does Blaine do it?
05 February 2015
Elaborate stage illusion - updated
An illustration from an 1897 book "Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions, including Trick Photography." (with a hat tip to reader S. Norma for that online fulltext link)
Found at Vintage Blog, where no further explanation is offered. I'll bet the participants sit in the group swing, which swings back and forth, and then the "room" surrounding them is rotated the opposite way, to give the illusion of near-inversion.
Clever. I wonder if any modern amusement parks incorporate this idea into their rides.
Addendum: In the Comments section, several readers have noted that this type of illusion still exists in amusement parks - for example the Villa Volta in the Netherlands and a Dutch Wonder House in Pennsylvania.
This type of ride is often referred to as a Madhouse ("designed to be an optical and physical illusion, consisting of several rows of seats attached to a swaying gondola within a rotating drum. The ride creates the impression that the rider is turning upside down, whereas it is actually the room that is moving around them. The ride is a modern implementation of a haunted swing illusion.")
I may have given the impression while writing the post that I am totally unfamiliar with amusement parks. Au contraire, mon frere. I grew up in a Excelsior, a suburb of Minneapolis, home to the Excelsior Amusement Park. Built in the 1920s on the shores of then-pristine Lake Minnetonka, it was an attraction for Minneapolis city-dwellers who arrived at the park via a (long) streetcar ride. The featured attraction was this roller-coaster (cropped for size from the original at Minnesota Reflections):
The coaster was demolished in the 1970s (memoriam here) and the lakeside amusement park replaced by the inevitable condominiums. I've not been to an amusement park since then; I don't suppose they've changed much...
21 May 2014
"Mind-reading" magic tricks explained
To an observer, it looks like this. The magician is blindfolded and faces a wall while his confederate goes around the audience, asking people to place on a tray any random items that they happen to be carrying with them. Coins, eyeglasses, wrist watches, credit cards--anything at all. Audience members also have the option to select playing cards from a deck.Further details and explanation at Boing Boing.
The confederate then holds up each item silently. No apparent way exists for the confederate to communicate with the magician, but somehow, the magician knows all.
28 April 2014
"Card control" demonstrated by Ricky Jay
Incredible skills. The Reddit discussion thread led me to a tedious but revelatory video on how to perform false shuffles.
23 October 2013
An expert female manipulator
The comment thread at BoingBoing indicates that this may or may not be Suzy Wandas ("the lady with the fairy fingers"), who was "reputed to be one of the half-dozen best manipulators in the history of magic."
21 October 2013
07 September 2012
16 August 2012
"Invisible chairs"
The two most reasonable explanations are:
1) A support inside their pants which flexes 90 degrees only. It would have to interface with some anchoring point on the floor.Any other ideas? It seems to have been filmed at a live performance, so presumably there is no green screen video editing.
2) Wire supports from above connecting to a body harness. Other "flying" performers raise this possibility.
Via Nothing To Do With Arbroath.
15 July 2012
Dutch illusionist Hans Klok
You'll be tempted to hit the pause and rewind buttons during this video.
22 May 2011
Mathematical card trick
I started learning card tricks to cheer up kids back when I was doing volunteer work in hospitals in the 1960s. Mathematical tricks are the best, because no sleight-of-hand is required. This is not my video; I'm just posting it for future reference.
Explanations of the math are in the Reddit thread.
03 March 2011
Lance Burton's sleight-of-hand
04 August 2010
The "Confuzzle" optical illusion
I believe this is a variant of the old "Disappearing Man" illusion. Instructions for creating your own Confuzzle with posterboard and ruler and scissors is at Instructables.
Via The Upcoming Queue.
06 September 2009
Impressive magic trick using stacked deck
I saw this trick at Futility Closet and didn't believe it. Tried it a couple times and it worked. I couldn't understand how it worked, so I requested the book from the library.
Impossible? Surprising Solutions to Counterintuitive Conundrums, by Julian Havil is not really a book of magic tricks. It's about mathematics - very advanced math. You can browse it at Google Books; I consider it too complex to add to my list of recommended books. But it was worth struggling through just to retrieve this card trick.
The trick itself is impressive. The deck has to be fixed as shown in the image above. It can then be cut as many times as desired without changing the result. After cutting, the deck is shuffled - but not shuffled in the typical sense of cut and then shuffle. Before shuffling, cards are dealt from the top to form the second pile, and that second pile is then shuffled into the first one. Basically one reverses the order of half the pile, then shuffles the piles together.
After the cutting and the shuffling, the deck will still be arranged in 13 consecutive sets of four cards of four different suits. Also, alternatively, it will also be arranged in four sets of 13 cards deuce through ace (mixed-suit straights). I've tried this several times, and it has always worked. The explanation starts out something like this...
My understanding is that what it boils down to is that a single shuffle of a deck of cards (in-shuffle, out-shuffle, perfect or imperfect) is not sufficient to randomize the order of the cards. Whether the shuffle is clumsily done or professionally done, the deck will still be "ordered" to the extent that ordered groups can be dealt from it.
The nice thing about the trick is that it doesn't require any sleight-of-hand. That means you can hand the deck to someone else, and they can do the trick. This will be entertaining some of my family and friends in the winter months to come...
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