Magic Tricks Essay

Science is my favourite class, but I never thought that this period that is already fun, would teach magic tricks whose fun goes over the border! And they’re not just tricks, but they’re science filled too! Here are a few of them: The spinning gyroscope in a swivel chair makes it spin; a coin is on top of a card on top of a cup. Flick the card – the coin stays in place & falls in the cup; A water bottle has a hole in its side, if the top is closed, the water doesn’t come out. If it’s open, it does.

The gyroscope tick works like this. When a gyroscope is spun (like the wheel of a bike) and then is spun horizontally (like the steering wheel of a bike connected to the wheel) and is placed on a spinning platform (like a swivel chair) and the steering wheel is pointing horizontally – then the chair with anyone inside will spin also. This is caused by the spinning forces created by the gyroscope. As we know, if a spinning gyroscope’s axle is pushed down, then the gyroscope will go left/right (depending on which way it is spinning) instead of down. Therefore, since the axle it will turn left/right on when pushed down is the swivel chair, when one of the gyroscope’s sides is pushed down, it will push at a 90° angle, causing the chair to turn.

The “Flick the card” trick goes as follows: When a card is placed on a plastic cup, and then a coin placed on top of the card, a person can flick the card with his/her finger. Then the card will slip away from underneath the coin and fly away, while the coin stays in place and falls into the cup. This happens because the inertia of the card does not transfer fully to the coin, because the coin wants to stay in place, like stated in Newton’s first law of motion. The friction between the card & coin is not strong enough to create an unbalanced force that could keep the coin moving at the same speed as the card.

Finally, the water bottle trick is explained this way: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Therefore, when the water is pushed out of the hole, something else must come back into the bottle. Since the entire hole is used for going out, the top hole is used for coming in. That says that if we close he top hole, then nothing could come in, and if nothing could come in, then nothing could come out. Therefore, the water stays in the bottle.

All of these tricks are breathtakingly interesting, but since we know how they work, science has made them very simple. However, if we think of the tricks and the science behind them separately, then they seem as amazing as the creation of the first DNA! Science is my favourite subject, but the magic tricks involved make it just amazingly amazing. These tricks will stay in my memory for long to come, and I will teach all of them to my friends and relatives. Thanks for the wizardry, Mr. Weitz!!!