Magic Shop
Ooh, a good one. Here's what they'll see.
You draw a fat arrow pointing to the right and stand it up behind an empty glass. Then you pour water into the glass. The arrow turns round and points the other way.
Works by itself, or one simple move. It works the first try.
Magic tricks aren't superpowers, and that's what makes them amazing. A magician is a performer who uses skill, science and storytelling to make the impossible look like it just happened in front of you. The wonder you feel is completely real, though.
Thousands. But almost every one of them is built from just eight ideas: making something vanish, making something appear, changing it, moving it, floating it, passing it through something solid, mending it, or knowing the answer in advance. Once you can spot the eight, you can see how any trick is put together.
More in Ask the Magician.
You draw a fat arrow pointing to the right and stand it up behind an empty glass. Then you pour water into the glass. The arrow turns round and points the other way. It's a level 1 apprentice trick for ages 5 to 9 (grades K–3rd), takes 2 minutes to learn, and needs 4 things you already have. Flick, the shop's rabbit, reads every step aloud with a picture, so a child can follow it alone.
A round glass full of water works like a lens. It bends the light crossing over itself, so everything behind it comes out back to front.
“Arrows are very easily confused. This one has had a long day. Watch me turn it round without touching it. Flip-flop!”
If it doesn't flip, the paper is too close. Slide it back a hand's width at a time until it turns over.
Light bends when it crosses from water into glass into air. A round glass of water bends it so much that the rays cross over each other on the way to your eye, and anything behind the glass arrives swapped left for right.
🌈 Transformation. Something changes into something else. Almost every trick ever invented is one of eight kinds, and knowing which one you're watching is how magicians work out how a new trick is done.
The skill it teaches: Patter: what you say. A trick is a story, not a thing that happens. Perform it and it counts towards the Kitchen Alchemist badge.
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