How Magicians Hide their Tricks

Magic tricks. Whether people want to believe it or not, they confuse almost everyone. The famous yet simple ‘saw-in-half’ magic trick has baffled audiences around the world for years. A person, who is “randomly” selected from the audience, comes up and goes into a rectangular box. Their feet stick out of the box, to show that the body is straight. Although it seems like ordinary human feet are hanging out of the box, they are actually fake latex foot models, deceiving the audience. As shown in Diagram C, the feet are hanging out of the concealed box, while the “audience member,” who’s part of this act, bends their legs just enough, so that their legs don’t get cut off by the saw, which is going right through the box. 

Simple, yet clever. When you think of Magic Tricks, card trickery almost always comes to mind as well. How do they always know what card you had? Firstly, they shuffle the deck, to make sure that they don't pre-plan this. Then a random audience member is asked to pick a card at random. The magician splits the cards in half, and they ask the audience member to place their card in their left hand. They then ook at the bottom card in their right hand. After this, they stack the cards so that your card is below theirs. Then they deal out the cards, so that as soon as they see their own card, they know the next one is yours.

Lastly, a death-defying act, swallowing swords. DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME! 

In order to do it, you must tilt your head backwards to allow a straight path into your throat. You need intense training to test your gag reflexes; one wrong move, and it could all go wrong. Between the mouth and the stomach, there are two muscle rings called the upper esophageal sphincters and lower esophageal sphincters. According to a magician, Dai Andrews, he recently shared in the New York Times that “although it may feel impenetrable, you need to relax, and loosen your muscles.” The blade length will vary on how long your throat is, Andrews limit is 24 inches. Serious stunts like these have very high chances (even if you are a professional) of death.