MAGIC BOAT

Make a small wooden boat three or four inches long. Just a simple piece of wood shaped like a hull will do fine. Ask an adult to help you bore a small hole in one end of the wood. Make it just big enough to hold a small straight magnet about an inch long. Push the magnet into the hole, stuff the hole so the magnet doesn't rattle, and seal and hide the hole by painting the boat.

When put into a dish of water, this boat will slowly rotate so that it points north or south, depending which way you inserted the magnet.

Your patter can consist of any outlandish story you can think of. You might say that this piece of wood came from a tree that you visited in the forest. As it grew, year by year, you would talk to it. Lots of people talk to their plants, you know. You told this tree that it would grow up to be as strong as iron. Apparently this encouragement was good. Because this piece of wood, cut from the tree, acts like iron. It points, like iron, to the north pole. Tell your audience that your magic words made this the only magnetic piece of wood in the world.

MAGIC RINGS

You will need a wooden pencil or plastic ball-point pen and two or more ceramic ring magnets. These are special magnets and do not look at all like the common horseshoe magnets. Be sure that the magnets you get have their north and south poles on their faces, not on the edges. To make sure, test them. If they are right, they will first stick together, but when you turn one over, it will be repelled—it will not stick to the other magnet. To be doubly sure, take a pencil with you when you buy the magnets and try Trick Number 1. It must work if the magnets are correct.

Tell your audience that you have black rings that were made out in space near the planet Saturn, and were influenced by its rings.

Trick Number 1: Put two magnets on the pencil as shown, so that they repel each other. Hold the bottom ring and move it up and down along the pencil. The upper ring will jump up and down as if it were attached to a spring.

Trick Number 2: Put the magnets on a pencil as above, but this time hold the bottom ring and let go of the pencil. The pencil will stay put. It will not fall through the rings.

Trick Number 3: Lay one ring on the table, and set the second one near it, ¼″ to ½″ away as illustrated. Do this carefully and slowly to get it just right.

The second magnet will vibrate standing only on one edge.

Trick Number 4: Hold two rings in the fingers of one hand as illustrated, about a quarter inch apart, so they repel each other. Hold tight to the bottom ring and loosen up on the upper ring. It will jump and flip over and stick to the first ring. This takes a little practice.

Trick Number 5: Hold one ring between your thumb and forefinger in a vertical position. Hang the second ring to it edge to edge. With a slight movement of your hand you can make the second ring travel round and round the first ring. You can get more speed if the ring held in your hand is somewhat larger than the second one.

Trick Number 6: You will need a ring magnet, a sheet of paper, some iron filings, and salt, sugar, or sand.

Mix a half teaspoonful or so of sand (or sugar or salt) with a more or less equal quantity of iron filings on the sheet of paper. Ask your audience how to separate them. You may get several suggestions. Tell them you will separate the two with your magic Saturn ring. Hold the magnet under the paper, under the pile of sand-iron, and move it back and forth with a gentle sweeping movement. As you move the magnet, the iron filings will follow, but the sand will be left behind. Many repeated sweeping movements will get most of the iron separated from the sand.

If you held the magnet above the paper, the iron filings would cling to the magnet and be difficult to remove.

MAGIC JAR # 1

In this trick an ordinary metal paper clip attached to a thread stands up in the air like a helium balloon.

You will need a glass jar with a metal screw cap similar to ones that olives or jelly come in, a large paper clip— about 2"—some thread, a piece of Scotch tape, and one or two of the ring magnets. You must ask your friendly dentist to drill a hole in the bottom of the jar for you.

Tie a length of thread to the paper clip. With the clip inside the jar, put the other end of the thread through the hole in the jar so that the clip hangs in the upside-down jar down to about ¾″ from the rim. Stick the thread to the bottom of the jar with a piece of tape. Put one or two ring magnets in the lid of the jar. They will stick by their own magnetism. You might wrap them in a bit of tissue paper first, to hide them. Now turn the jar right side up and screw on the lid. The clip will be lying on the bottom of the jar.

Tell your audience that you have a magic jar. Tell them that it is filled with antigravitational space, and that a foreign country would like to know the secret so they can launch a space vehicle without the use of rockets.

At this point you turn the jar upside down. The clip will be strongly attracted to the magnet. Then carefully turn it right side up again. The clip will be suspended high in the jar, pulling on the thread and trying to go farther up, just like a miniature helium balloon.

OceanofPDF.com