Dave Wall, City College of San Francisco
History of Physics of Magic, and Vice-Versa
Some years ago, when my daughter was in pre-school, I found that the few coin tricks I had learned as a teenager were invaluable for distracting small children. I therefore started attending magic club meetings, going to magician's lectures, and otherwise studying magic. Not to do in physics class -- that was an accident -- but to survive as a preschool parent.
Then I thought of this great title for a contributed paper at a physics meeting and had to assemble a talk to fit the title. When I got to the physics meeting, I found they had put me in a large hall and it was filling with people expecting to be entertained -- whoops, I mean informed. Much to my relief, the things went splendidly since I was well prepared, having gotten a great deal of help from my magician friends.
One of my friends in Ring 38 of the International Brotherhood of Magicians, Ed Morris, was on the Board of Regents for the University of California. Ed got the idea of using the title of my talk as basis for a fundraiser for the Lawrence Hall of Science. We actually filled the auditorium at the Lawrence Hall of Science at $200 a seat. And that was back when $5 would buy you a steak dinner at a fine restaurant.
There were six Nobel laureates in the audience and I had the honor of sharing the stage with three other magicians and a world famous physics teacher. In addition to me there was my friend, Ed, his friend Dr. Albo and the famous Professor Harvey White of the U.C. Berkeley Physics Department. Opening and closing the show we had a professional magician, Dr. Harry Lovecraft. Dr. Albo, incidentally, owns the world's largest collection of magic paraphernalia. Together, we put on an excellent show that was well recieved.
Harvey White and his Pepper's Ghost
Professor Harvey White did a Pepper's Ghost to die for. The apparatus is still in the Berkeley collection with the following picture:
In his presentation, Dr. White started by talking about how light bulbs work, describing how electrical current heats the wire filament. In the middle of his explanation, the bulb went out. So Dr. White tapped the bulb and, when it came back on, he explained how you can get a bit more life out of a light bulb if you can get the free ends of the filament to touch weld themselves temporarily. This explanation was interrupted several times when the bulb would go out and each time Dr White would tap the bulb more forcefully.
Finally, Dr. White appeared to loose patience and smashed the light bulb with a hammer.
It came on!
The dummy bulb that Dr. White tapped and finally smashed was already burned out. The real bulb was under an innocent looking black can on the same side of the glass window pane as the audience. Dr. White, as it turned out, was controlling it with a foot switch.
True to his reputation as widely acclaimed physics teacher and author of a famous textbook on optics, Professor Harvey White then explained the nature of virtual images with beautifully drawn blackboard diagrams.
I might pause to note that his textbook was a personal favorite of mine when I was an upper division undergraduate, long before I knew who he was. I was proud to share the stage with this grand old physics teacher.
How I wish we had a video of Harvey White doing that performance!
Recent Years
In recent years, I have been invited as a seminar speaker at physics clubs and the like. At the summer AAPT meeting in Denver, I got the idea of using this traveling road show as part of my sabbatical project in which I am traveling about videotaping everyone's favorite physics demonstrations.
I suggested to some of my friends that I would come to their college, do Physics of Magic, stay at their house and eat their food. Several dozen of my old friends have taken me up on this offer and I have made a number of great new friends as well.
In the Summer of 1998, I was honored to do the evening show at the AAPT meeting in Lincoln. Folks told me it was great, and I choose to believe them. I chose Steve Schropshire as volunteer long before I knew who he was.. Steve seemed intent on exposing the rings, and that worked out very well.
In January of 1999, I was invited to share in producing a Physics of Magic session for the winter meeting along with my friend Tom Zepf at Creighton University, and Bob Friedhoffer, a New York pro. For that show, we presented a Sphinx Illusion.
In June of 1999, I was invited to the Netherlands to do my show at the University of Groningen. What a wonderful trip that turned out to be.
In the winter meeting of 2000, several of my magician friends collaborated on a pair of workshops on the use of magic in teaching physics.
In the Spring of 2001, I was invited by the APS, for the Seattle March Meeting, to speak on Adding a little magic to your demos and to the North Carolina section of the AAPT for show and teaching.
In the Fall of 2001, I was invited by the Arkansas-Oklahoma-Kansas section of the AAPT to do a show and rope workshop for their fall meeting.
That was six years ago. Here it is April of 2007, and I am there still.