We are fast approaching the party season. For the past couple of years I have created little videos containing science stunts to help ensure that you are the life and soul of any party. I have just released the 2011 video – here it is….
Which was your favourite stunt?
Richard Wiseman 
The milk and food colouring one has always been my favourite.
milk and food coloring
The potato and the straw is my favourite.
I like the egg-in-a-bottle. We did the same trick with grapes at my son’s science party (6th birthday) last year. (This year’s party was not so intellectual: Horrid Henry theme!)
The kitten and the waffle iron.
That’s my local pub.
Egg in bottle,
if you soak a raw egg in vinegar for a few days then it softens enough to be sucked in too (sometimes)
I just tried the match between fingers stunt and am now the proud owner of half a box of broken matches.
Unless “keeping the fingers flat” means not moving them I don’t see how that is supposed to work.
It means keeping the fingers and palm stretched out. Usually, that sort of locks those fingers in place.
@Berber Anna :
Sorry, doesn’t work. And stretched out and flat is not even close to the same thing for me. Guess I’ve got strange joints. Let my wife try it out and for her it works.
Yeah, the stretched out =/= flat applies to me as well (hypermobile joints — probably the same for you), but I kind of gathered from the video that he meant stretched out.
the milk and food colouring, since im arty I enjoyed the effect, egg second pretty funny.
The egg. Didn’t expect that.
We did the egg and bottle trick in grade school science class. We dropped a lighted match into a bottle then placed the egg on the neck (I recall the neck was slightly larger than the one in the video). Slightly different technique, same result (minus the breakage) I remember it made a really funny popping sound when it went through.
Should we be encouarging children to experiment with candles and science in this modern, safety conscious world?
Yes. Yes, we should.
The match and fingers one has a followup; while keeping your hand and fingers completely flat and stretched out as per the instructions, slap your hand down onto a flat surface. That should break the match.
Yaaaaay! Thanks for not combining the small person standing on other person with the straw-through-the-potato and dyed milk spectacle this year. May the camera you have next year make that sound like a reasonable image to capture, and may it be delivered by the Three-Cups Fire Magic Of Exceptional Height Insurance Group.
Milk + food coloring for sure.
The egg being sucked by the bottle is quite amazing! Everything else I found a lil´ tame, to be honest… some funny stuff for sure, but I was expecting something more exciting 🙂
It´d be great if there was a quick scientific explanation following every “trick” though, just to get an idea of what´s going on.