When you're a child, every magic trick seems real. You sit in amazement as your grandpa steals your nose or someone pulls a rabbit out of a hat. As children, we didn't even question how these tricks are done, we just believed them. When you grow up, the magic tricks get even more elaborate to satisfy our slightly more skeptical brains. Magicians like David Copperfield and David Blaine mystify us with elaborate Las Vegas stage shows and tricks that involve levitating people or making the Statue of Liberty disappear.
I'm sorry to say that magicians are masters of illusion. They are experts at tricking the human psyche into believing completely preposterous violations of basic physics. At some point, magicians started exposing their secrets because most of these famous tricks have a perfectly reasonable explanation. Check out this list of 6 magic tricks that have been explained.
SHARE this article with your friends on Facebook. They need to see these! If you were a big Michael Jackson fan, you have to see #4.
1. The person-slicing magic trick is a classic.
This trick starts with a woman (usually) climbing into a coffin-type box. After some elaborate dialogue on the part of the magician, he simply appears to cut her in half.
Believe it or not, there are actually two different people other than the magician incorporated into this trick.
In most cases, the chamber that they sit in is deeper than the apparent table from the outside, allowing for extra room. Sometimes the magician asks the assistant to wiggle their feet after the cutting has already taken place. This set up allows for the other assistant to wiggle their feet for believability.
2. You've probably seen this trick at some point on the street. It appears as if this man is levitating, with nothing but a post nearby.
Think about it: Why would he need that post if he were truly levitating? These onlookers appear quite convinced.
A hidden platform held up by a very strong post is the secret to this magic trick.
As magicians know very well, people can be easily distracted. Instead of caring about the post that the man is resting his hand on, they only really care about the fact that the man is levitating.
3. Here's another classic. The floating woman.
The trick begins with an assistant laying on a table in front of the magician. Of course, the crowd is amazed when the magician suddenly removes the table and she is still levitating.
There are a few tricks the magician uses to pull off this crowd favorite.
The woman involved in the trick usually wears a long flowing dress that covers up the real magic in this trick — a mechanical levitation device hooked onto the magician. Again, magicians are sneaky. They know that distracting away from the real source of the lift is key.
That's where the hula hoop comes in. To convince the crowd that nothing is attached to the woman, the magician moves a large hula hoop along the length of the woman. The location where the lift device attaches to the magician allows for the ring to pass smoothly over her body.
4. Remember that unreal lean Michael Jackson did in the music video for "Smooth Criminal?" Sorry, but he wasn't
that good.
This wasn't real? Ahhh, shamone!
Both in the music video and live performances, Jacko wore some special shoes that hooked onto a stage 'nail.'
You can see how it works in the GIF below. For some of you, this was really disappointing. I apologize.
5. This is probably the most well-known magic trick out there. Pulling a rabbit out of a hat!
While simple, this trick always confused me. Rabbits are hard to hide. It's not like you can have a false compartment in the hat that fits a decent-sized rabbit.
Well, there's one way to hide a rabbit
— hang it from a cloth sac from the edge of the table.A tablecloth is also needed for this trick. While the magician shows the crowd that the top hat is completely empty, a rabbit is fully hanging from a cloth sac under the tablecloth. The difficult part of this trick comes when you lift the hat and slide the rabbit underneath.
6. In one incredible trick, David Copperfield convinced an entire crowd that he made the Statue of Liberty disappear. What, really?
On live television in 1983, the magician had a large audience sit facing the monument. The audience could initially see the statue through two giant pillars, but Copperfield hid it behind a curtain soon afterward. After a small period of time, Copperfield dropped the curtain showing that his magic had actually made the Statue of Liberty disappear.
Yes, even this insane trick is explainable.
Little did the audience know, but they were actually positioned on a giant lazy susan! After the audience looked at the statue, they slowly rotated around to a point where it was no longer visible. Wouldn't they notice that they were being rotated? It actually occurred in a location at night with relatively few noticeable landmarks.
After the stage finished rotating, Copperfield dropped the curtain and the crowd gasped in amazement that he made the Statue of Liberty disappear. Wow, that is some major commitment, David.
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