Magic Shop

Grown-ups

🧪 Top 10 kitchen-science magic tricks

Ours, all ten: every trick on this list is from Peabody's Magic Shop, free, with picture steps read aloud by Flick.

The Potion Lab's tricks are real science that looks exactly like magic: surface tension, light bending through water, a colour change from something in the cupboard. Everything in them is food-safe or a dry tool that never touches the liquid, and every potion is for looking at, never for drinking.

Do the trick first and explain it afterwards. The science is a second surprise, and every one of these has it written on its page in a child's words. The steps that need a grown-up say so out loud.

How it is ranked: Potion Lab tricks, easiest level first, then quickest to learn. Checked against the shop on .

The 10

  1. 1. Pepper ScatterThe Potion LabApprentice, 2 minutes to learn, ages 5 to 9; you need bowl, water, pepper, dish soap. Water has surface tension: the top layer behaves like a stretchy skin, and the pepper is light enough to sit on it.
  2. 2. The Arrow FlipThe Potion LabApprentice, 2 minutes to learn, ages 5 to 9; you need glass, water, paper, marker. Light bends when it crosses from water into glass into air.
  3. 3. The Water VanishThe Potion LabApprentice, 2 minutes to learn, ages 5 to 10; you need glass, water, coin, saucer. This is called total internal reflection.
  4. 4. The Glowing PotionThe Potion LabApprentice, 2 minutes to learn, ages 6 to 11; you need glass, water, tonic water, UV light. Quinine soaks up ultraviolet light, which human eyes can't see, and hands it straight back out as visible blue light.
  5. 5. The Upside-Down Water CardThe Potion LabApprentice, 5 minutes to learn, ages 6 to 11; you need glass, water, index card. The air around us presses on everything, quite hard, from every direction.
  6. 6. The Balloon Static WandThe Potion LabApprentice, 5 minutes to learn, ages 5 to 10; you need balloon, paper strip. Rubbing the balloon on your hair scrapes tiny electric charges off it, and the balloon keeps them.
  7. 7. The Obedient EggThe Potion LabApprentice, 5 minutes to learn, ages 6 to 11; you need egg, glass, water, salt. Whether something floats depends on how heavy it is compared with the water it pushes out of the way.
  8. 8. The Floating PaperclipThe Potion LabApprentice, 5 minutes to learn, ages 6 to 11; you need paperclips, bowl, water, dish soap. Water molecules pull on each other, and at the top there is nothing above them to pull back, so the surface pulls itself tight into something like a skin.
  9. 9. Secret Message InkThe Potion LabApprentice, 10 minutes to learn, ages 5 to 10; you need white paper, baking soda, water, cotton swab, grape juice, paintbrush. Grape juice has a natural dye in it that changes colour depending on what it touches.
  10. 10. The Colour-Changing PotionThe Potion LabConjurer, 10 minutes to learn, ages 6 to 11; you need grape juice, baking soda, glass, water. Grape juice and red cabbage contain a dye that changes colour depending on what it is mixed with.

↑ All the Top 10s · Science magic tricks for kids · Pick me a trick · The Magic Shop

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