Fun at home and a Vaudeville trick

The Physics Girl, Diana, has a rush challenge of performing 20 at-home physics experiments for bored kids and parents in a 5-minute time limit. Of course, the time limit is optional so take as much fun and try as many as you like. (Some fire is included and grownup supervision is recommended.)

At the very end, I was delighted to see the “Eggs and Glasses” which is just a demonstration of inertia, but used to be part of the stage performances of a Vaudeville magician, Emil Jarrow (1876-1958). A few years ago, I was working on a video archiving project for The Screening Room and came across the master French comedy magician Gaëtan Bloom performing the same stunt on Spanish TV.

It’s a simple thing you can try at home. There’s no secret to it beyond what’s demonstrated in the clip. But if you don’t commit to it, you can have an awful mess to clean up.

Social Distancing: Indulgence

With all of the social distancing, my Canadian magic colleague, Carisa Hendrix, has given us all a little something to indulge in… Literally!

She took a full performance of her show Indulgence, performed at the Chicago Magic Lounge in the loveable guise of Lucy Darling… a delightfully vivacious character that needs to be seen to be believed.

I suppose a small parental advisory is in order, but there are some naughty words and copious amounts of alcohol… no really. I had a show called Magic & Martini for three years and I never even came close to this!

So as my colleague Jamy Ian Swiss was fond of saying, put away the smart phone, expand the browser and INDULGE!

A Lucky Discovery

Sometimes in my show I reveal the truth about my past, before I was a professional magician, I was at the University of Toronto studying math. Not the fast track to popularity you think it might be, but it teaches you some powerful techniques for problem solving.

I made this lucky discovery when I found out that the most recent (2019) Christmas Lectures at the Royal Institution were presented by Hannah Fry. Hannah is a math — or since this is the UK, I will be respectful and switch to saying maths — communicator and an associate professor at University College London. The Christmas Lectures is cultural institution in the UK started by Michael Faraday (the person who essentially discovered electricity) back in 1825. The program is designed to bring science to a family audience.

I was checking out one of the lectures, which is all about probability, and luck. Everything is presented in the most interactive and visual way possible, and they did a fantastic job. It’s a talk about maths with no blackboard and no formulas. She discusses real problems like “What does it mean when it says there is a 20% chance of rain tomorrow?” and also the problem of false positives in medical screenings. I particularly enjoyed her treatment of the paradoxical “prisoner’s dilemma” from game theory.

But the best part is, she opens with a magic trick!

Not just any magic trick, but it’s a Canadian magic trick, and an old one at that. Her opening piece (which involves a small amount danger — trigger warning) is a giant version of something created by Canadian magician Stewart James. It appeared in a magic magazine in 1926 under the title “A Match for Gravity”. She does an oversize version then repeats with a smaller version with a teacup. The original used a paper match and a pocket watch… but even at the Royal Institution, I doubt there were any children there she could have borrowed a pocket watch from.

Stewart is widely regarded as one of the most creative magicians who ever lived. He was particularly fascinated by mathematical principles, but also created a number of curious pieces that were far more physical in nature, like this one. He was a magician as a hobbyist, working for most of his life as a postal worker in his native town of Courtright, Ontario. His work was collected in the three giant volumes shown below:

Author Allan Slaight holding three very heavy books containing the collected secrets of Stewart James

As if the world were not yet full enough of strange coincidences, this photo currently appears on the wall of the Art Gallery of Ontario as the “Allan Slaight Collection of Magic Posters” is currently on display in an exhibition called Illusions: The Art of Magic.

Also prominently featured in the lecture is another maths communicator Matt Parker, who created what is possibly the best-titled event ever: “The Festival of the Spoken Nerd.” ‘Nough said.

The science behind an illusion

Fran Scott from the Royal Institution in England looks at the science behind an illusory Jeff Koons “sculpture”. In it, three basketballs sit motionless in a tank of water half way down with no visible means of suspension. This is what it looks like:

Jeff Koon - Three Ball Total Equilibrium Tank

Now an inflated basketball would be full of air (um… by definition) so the fact that they’re underwater at all is unusual. And they couldn’t be filled with rocks because they would sink to the bottom. It’s also not a case of having some strategically positioned supports hiding behind the basketballs; you could walk all the way around the tank.

If you would prefer not to know, don’t watch this:

Pulling Back The Curtain

Penn Jillette (the speaking half of Penn & Teller) gives Vanity Fair a bit of inside commentary looking at magic performed in major TV and motion pictures including The Prestige, The Illusionist, Arrested Development and more — that is actors portraying magic tricks on camera, regardless of whether they’re actually performing the magic or using camera tricks. In addition to contrasting how magic in real life differs from its on-screen portrayal, he gives a look at the philosophical and ethical choices that go into presenting magic.

On the difference between Juggling and Magic

The legendary Penn & Teller were on Jimmy Fallon promoting the new season of their show Fool Us. They always have magic which is deeply thought-provoking. Here they talk about the difference between juggling, which relies on skill, and magic, which relies on lying. (Which is truly wonderful because a lot of Penn’s juggling is based on lying and much of Teller’s trick is based on skill.