Themed “Science & Tech Magic”, tonight’s meeting was hosted by JK Tan, aka The Mad Scientist, and his assistant, Joseph Then, aka Magic Joe.  It attracted an attendance of 26.

JK Tan, in his Mad Scientist persona, kicked off the meeting with a series of interesting magic demonstrations to illustrate the various principles of science.  To demonstrate static electricity, he made paper ballerinas and paper snakes danced, suspended a form cup in mid-air, and “printed” the word SCIENCE in black toner ink.  JK Tan made a ball bearing move inside a straw with small magnets placed at each end of the straw, and triggered a bulb to light by inserting a metal rod into a coil of wires to demonstrate electrical induction.  He “caused” water from a teapot to become different colour by using different colour balls inside the teapot.  With a partially blown balloon inside a glass bottle, JK Tan demonstrated that air occupies space.

Joseph Then, in his role as Magic Joe, magically caused an isolated and unconnected bulb to light whenever someone told a truth.  He then invited a volunteer to erase what the volunteer had secretly written on his mobile phone, and then made a correct prediction of the erased content!

Takuma Kobayashi from Japan took his induction test.  He performed card manipulations, making fans of cards appear and vanish, and eventually transforming them into giant cards.  Four volunteers each secretly selected a card with a favourite dish, and attached it to a big paper clip.  The clips with the cards were then shuffled, and strung up with a long string with both ends held by Takuma and one of the 4 volunteers.  Takuma then correctly predicted that volunteer’s selected card, as his card was the only one left hanging on the string while the others fell off.

Thomas Yeo placed nine paper plates on the table, in the form of a triangle, with each plate holding some “monster eyes”.  The number of “balls” totalled 13 on each side of the triangle.  After adding some more “eyes”, he moved some “balls” around, and caused each side to again total 13.  This was repeated a number of times.  Although more and more “balls” were added to the triangle, he still caused each side to total 13 “balls”.

Lucas Lau had a volunteer spelled to his chosen card, and magically found the other 3 mates to his card in the process.  The volunteer chose another card.  Lucas “found” the wrong card, but had it transformed into the correct card.  This card was again lost in the deck, and Lucas found the card in-between his lips!  2 volunteers chose 2 different cards.  Lucas found each card but they belonged to the other volunteer.  He magically transformed them so that the correct card went to the correct volunteer.

Erica Seah told a touching story of a colour-blind friend who did not let her visual impairment hamper her enjoyment of the world she lived in.  She got a volunteer to shuffle 4 identical cards with printed picture outlines, and 4 identical sharpies with different coloured inks.  4 volunteers randomly picked a sharpie and a card each, and proceeded to choose a picture to colour over.  Erica then displayed a card given to her by that friend.  It consisted of 4 different coloured pictures.  Amazingly, each of the pictures on her card matched a volunteer’s selected picture and colour – a red sun, green car, black house and a blue tree!

James Pang demonstrated “Dean’s Box” where 2 separate colour ropes magically linked with each other inside the box.  He then caused a ring to magically penetrate the linked ropes, and then vanish altogether.  James added another effect to the “Dean’s Box”.  2 chosen cards vanished from a deck of cards when placed inside the “Box”, and reappeared inside the empty card case.

Tommy Kian showed how technology could enhance magic performances with the performance of “Leviosa Phone”.  His mobile phone, placed on the floor, mysteriously flipped over, and the flashlight turned on upon command.  Finally, the phone floats up into Tommy’s waiting hand.  He cloned a picture on a volunteer’s phone gallery, on his own phone, created multiple copies of the picture before restoring it back to just one.  Tommy had a volunteer named a popular tourist spot in Singapore and proceeded to spray some liquid on a sketchpad and the image of a mentioned tourist attraction emerged!

John Teo presented 2 effects.  In Tenyo’s “Anakarakuri”, he used a contraption comprising a cardboard with heart cut-outs, to predict the eight of hearts, a volunteer’s first chosen card.  He appeared to have difficulties finding the second chosen card, the Queen of Hearts, as it was not possible for this simple heart cut-out cards to show a picture card.  However he finally did it and then it quickly disappeared as it was all an illusion.  In “Gravity Clips”, he clipped 8 different movie posters on a length of rope.  He revealled a secretly chosen movie poster, and magically caused all the other 7 movie posters to fall to the floor.

Following the last performance, 5 lucky members walked away with prizes in a lucky draw.

After a short break, a sales and auction of magic items was held with all sales proceeds going to our late member, Ashish’s family.

Reported by:

Low Hwee Lang (Ms)