A Little Observation About Cool Magic Tricks

When you mention magic to someone, what kind of a response do you get? My experience is that the person in question usually gets a faraway look in their eye and says “ooh, I love magic—-I have no idea how they pull off those things that they do like whipping a coin out of thin air from behind your head, but I love to try and figure it out.” Most responses are like that because for most folks, magic is fun and spellbinding and after watching a few cool magic tricks, the average person is hooked.

A good show starter or something to just wow the gang around the water cooler, are amazing card tricks. These are done usually with just a deck of cards, and you don’t need anything else except your prowess at pulling off the cool magic tricks. Some of the card tricks can’t be done unless you have a couple of extra jokers at your disposal, so make sure you are prepared if that’s the trick you are planning to do. I’m talking about the one where you have someone pull a card out of the deck and you either pretend to memorize it or in the case of the extra jokers, will say the jokers will pull the card out that the person picked. You do your thing of shuffling and moving cards around depending on the trick, and there you have it, the card is indeed between the two jokers, and the people standing watching you think you are the cat’s meow because no matter how many times they see you do it, they can’t figure it out.

And don’t forget the kids in all this. Kids love magic and cool magic tricks and they always want to participate and join in the fun when you are doing something really neat with magic. For instance, something as simple as making slime is a neat trick that makes the kids begin to open up and enjoy themselves, because they can not only watch you make the slime in the first place, but they get to play with it over and over again after the trick is over. All you need for this little fun endeavor, is some glue, water and borax powder—-mix them up, and there you have it—first class slime.

Basic chemistry in all its glory takes the stage for this member of the cool magic tricks category; this is the science project we all tried at least once in our school days tenure, and even today—kids are still being wowed by its impressiveness. And it is so simple to do, but you will have everyone’s attention in the room when the eruption takes place. Yep, I’m talking about creating and firing up a volcano. All you need to look like a full fledged wizard is some flour and water that you mold into a cone, some detergent added into the inside of the cone and then the real magic begins when you pour in the liquid ingredients of vinegar and baking soda and holy mackerel—–there you have Krakatoa all over again on the counter in front of you and the kids are going wild as the smoke and “lava” pour out of the cone and down the sides.

Now here we have something that would be relegated to the cool magic tricks bag that is very simple to pull off, but still boggles the average mind watching the trick as to how it is done. Believe me, if you have a handle on just the simplest basics of chemistry, you can wow all kinds of people because you can do what looks like amazing stuff with just the simplest of ingredients if you know how they will react with one another. Here’s another example of chemistry in action; it’s called the Burning Dollar Bill and it is based on the fact that alcohol and something soaked in water will have different flash points when fire or a flame is introduced into the area. Take a plain dollar bill and soak it in water until it remains damp to the touch (dollar bills are made of a cloth-like material so they soak up water well and will hold it for a while), then add some alcohol to the bill, strike a match, and light the bill. Because the alcohol has a lower flash point than the water-soaked cloth material, the alcohol will flame up and burn like crazy, while the water in the bill keeps it from catching at all. Then blow out the flames and show the untouched, unburned bill to all the disbelievers standing around watching. Sure to be a winner.

One fact you must always obey and remember is that when you are performing cool magic tricks, you don’t want the audience to be too close to you when you are actually doing the tricks. The reason for this is that if they are too close, they might just see what it is you are doing and how the sleight of hand works and have an aha moment—-and that is the last thing you want to happen. Keep a good distance between you and them, and this little trick is a good example of that. For this one, you are going to make a used, burned out match come “back to life” and flame again as if it were new. What the folks watching don’t know is that you are really using a new match, but you are disguising it so it looks like an old used one. To do that, you take a new match, dip it in black ink, and roll it in used ashes so the match itself looks burnt out. That’s all done before you start the trick—-you take the “used” match and strike it after much abracadabra action, and boom—-the match lights just as if it were brand new, and of course, it really is. Your the only one privy to that info.

Magic is a wonderful part of our lives and should be treasured for the terrific art that it is. No matter how young or old we are, we all love to see a tried and true magician work his magic—literally—and we enjoy being part of all the fun. The best part is that cool magic tricks always pique our interest, and will always be a crowd pleaser no matter how many times they are done—-that is the true “magic”.