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Floating Paper Clip

What You Need

Scissors
String
Paper clip
Scotch Tape
Clean, empty glass jar with a metal lid
Magnet

What to Do
Cut a piece of string a few inches long and tie one end to the paper clip. Tape the other end to the bottom of the jar. Place the magnet inside the lid. Show the jar to your audience with the clip lying at the bottom of the jar. Screw the lid on the jar, and then turn the jar upside down so the clip hangs from the string. Turn the jar rightside up again.

What Happens
The paper clip remains suspended in air.

Why It Works
The magnet attracts the paper clip, but the string prevents the paper clip from being pulled to the magnet.

Bizarre Facts

Scientists believe that the earth acts like a huge magnet with magnetic north and south poles.
In 1900, Cornelius J. Brosnan received a patent for the Konaclip, better known today as the paper clip.
The Indian rope trick (making an ordinary rope rise into the night sky and then climbing up the rope) is done by stretching thin cable some fifty feet off the ground across a valley and slinging another fine cable over it—one end held by an assistant far off in the distance, the other end attached to a small hook that is attached to the rope.
In the 1890s, French magician Alexander Herrmann created the illusion of levitation by a having a "hypnotized" woman lie on a board placed between the back of two chairs, taking away the two chairs, and then passing a hoop around the floating woman. The illusion is created by having an assistant behind a curtain operate a strong frame set with a "gooseneck" (a metal slat curved like the neck of a goose).
In an eighteenth-century treatise, Pope Benedict XIV reported that several eyewitnesses, including Pope Urban VIII, had seen St. Joseph of Cupertino rise into the air "when in a condition of ecstatic rapture."
In Belgravia magazine, Reverend C. M. Davies, a critic of psychics, detailed his own eyewitness account of seeing British psychic Daniel Dunglas Home float around a drawing room for five minutes.

Separate Tales of Absurdity
In his nonfiction books, anthropologist Carlos Castaneda reported seeing Mexican Indian sorcerer Don Genaro fly through the air, walk horizontally up the side of a tree, and fly back. He also claimed to have seen both Don Genaro and Don Juan jump off a cliff, twirl slowly in the air, reach bottom, and float back up to the top. Many consider Castaneda's nonfiction books to be works of novelistic fancy.

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