Which Material Works Best For Magic Trick?

Question:

What material works best for the tablecloth trick?

Hypothesis:

I think linen will be the best material for the trick.

Procedure:

• 1. Make sure that each of the materials are 17 centimeters long

  2. Put fifteen centimeters of it on the table and have 2 centimeters off the table

  3. Put the water in the middle of the material

  4. Pull the 2 centimeter piece

  5. Measure the movement of the water bottle

1. Repeat three times for each material

Abstract:

Abracadab

Aidan Bradley

The question I was investigating in this experiment was which material works best for the tablecloth magic trick. My hypothesis was that linen would be the best material because it is tough, yet soft. I decided to do this experiment because I always wondered how they did magic tricks. This project exposes how they did the magic trick.

The materials I needed for this experiment were pieces of linen, plastic, sandpaper, cotton, and tissue paper. Another thing I had was a water bottle that was half full. Each material was 17 centimeters long. Some had to be cut to the right size. 15 centimeters of the material was on the table and 2 inches of the material was off the table. I pulled the 2 inch piece of the material and then measured how far the water bottle moved. In the magic trick, the things on the material shouldn’t move drastically or fall over. If the water bottle on the material moved the least that material works best.

All my of my data was tested in centimeters. I also put all my three tries into an average. I tested linen, plastic, sandpaper, cotton, and tissue paper. The bottle on the linen moved, in average, 2.76 centimeters. The bottle on cotton moved 3.33 centimeters and it moved 4.9 centimeters on plastic. The bottle moved 10.6 centimeters on sandpaper and 3.06 centimeters on tissue paper.

In doing this project I learned how to do this magic trick right and I learned that linen was the best material for the magic trick. My hypothesis was right because I predicted that linen would be the best material and it was. Linen had the lowest average which is what I wanted. The average for linen was 2.76 centimeters. There are unfortunately a few things that could have made this an unfair test. Some things might have been that I wasn’t pulling with the same strength and the water bottle might not have always been placed in the same spot. For the most part, my project was accurate. My answers seem reasonable.