Amazing Irv's Handbook of Everyday Magic by Irv Furman

Author:Irv Furman [Furman, Irv]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-59474-914-8
Publisher: Quirk Books
Published: 2015-12-22T05:00:00+00:00

What They See

Gathering several coworkers around you, you ask for someone to volunteer his watch, and you direct him to spin the stem several times to arrive at a random time of day. You write down a few numbers on a piece of paper, then seal your slip in an envelope. Someone opens up your sealed envelope, revealing that the numbers you wrote indicate the same time!

What You’ll Need

An analog watch that also shows the date

An envelope

A slip of paper

A pencil

What You’ll Do

1. Ask one of your coworkers for an analog watch that displays both time and date.

2. Pull out the stem and demonstrate that the hands spin freely. (Fig. A)

3. Remembering the time at which you stopped, turn the watch face-down and secretly push the stem in one notch—which is the date position.

4. Ask for a volunteer to come up and spin the stem as often as he wishes, backward or forward, keeping the watch face down.

5. As your volunteer is freely spinning the stem, write down your prediction and seal it in the envelope. (Fig. B) Be sure to leave the envelope in view of your audience.

6. When your volunteer has finished spinning the stem, ask him to push it in, locking the hands in place. Don’t worry—he’s only changing the date, even though he assumes he’s moving the hands. (Fig. C)

7. Next, have him turn the watch over and read the time.

8. Now have him open your prediction, which has been sitting in front of the group the whole time. Your prediction will be accurate within minutes of the selected time. (Fig. D)

Note: You could have predicted the time to the precise second, but being a few minutes off makes this effect more believable.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.