How To Make a Fork and Spoon Appear to Defy Gravity

This is a basic trick that enables you to defy the laws of physics - or at least fool others into thinking so. Just take common dinner utensils and make them appear to hover in space on the edge of a glass...

Step 1  

Obtain a large glass that has quite a bit of mass to it. It is especially good if the glass has a wide mouth with a tapered bottom.

Step 2  

Fill the glass at least half full of liquid. Remember that the entire weight of the silverware will be supported on one single point on the outside edge of the glass.

Step 3  

Take the fork and spoon and "hook" them together using the first and last tines of the fork to overlap the spoon. The handle ends must both point in the same direction, making a very crude boomerang shape when the two are connected together.

Step 4  

Place the matchstick in the most central position possible. Ensure that it is still touching the spoon. Leave as much of the matchstick sticking towards the center of the "boomerang" shape as possible.

Step 5  

Balance the resulting apparatus. Take the whole kit and (here comes the tricky part) balance the matchstick on the edge of the glass with the two handle ends pointing back towards the glass. Note that the matchstick will be horizontal.

Step 6  

Make the apparatus balance by moving the matchstick from side to side, as well as closer to and farther away from the glass.

Step 7  

Consider burning the ends of the matchstick off after you have balanced everything. Then sit back and collect your bets. The reason that people believe it is defying gravity is the fact that they believe it is balancing relative to the entire cup, rather than just one edge of it. They are technically fooling themselves.

Tips

• The toughest part of the trick is getting the balancing right. Some forks and spoons won't cooperate, so try it at home with your own silverware or do it at a restaurant you visit often to see if theirs will work as well.
• You can set fire to both ends of the matchstick after you've balanced them and they will burn up right to the point where they're touching the glass and the silverware; this will really drive home the fact that it looks cool just hanging there in mid-air.
• A square body matchstick is superior to a round one for this trick, as the round one has a tendency to roll a lot when you're trying to balance the apparatus.
• So you want to know how this works? Okay. There are two things at work here: one - the center of gravity. There is actually the same mass on both sides of the "center" which, depending on the utensils you use, is somewhere just below the middle of the matchstick. The second thing happening is called "torque". Torque is a little twisting motion that the spork is doing and it is hard to see with the eye. Gravity pulls the ends of fork and spoon down (since they're lower than the connected part) but the connected end of the spork gets pulled down too, which sets in motion a repeating pattern - swing up, swing down, up, down, etc.
• An alternative technique is to use two forks and put a quarter (medium sized coin) between the middle slot of the two forks when they are held together and balance this in the same way.
• Yet another alternative: Create the fork and spoon "boomerang" with one matchstick as before. Stick another matchstick upright in the top of a heavy salt shaker. Balance one matchstick on the point of the other. If you're lucky, the center of gravity will work so as to allow you to balance the point of one matchstick on the point of the other at close to a 90 degree angle. This one takes a bit of experimentation.

Warnings

• If you decide to set fire to the matchstick, be careful to only burn the ends of the matchstick, not the middle part obviously. It helps when burning the matchstick to have a lot of matchstick to burn.
• Do not attempt to burn the matchstick over a drink that contains alcohol.

Things You'll Need

• A spoon
• A fork
• A matchstick (preferably square-bodied)
• A wide-mouthed glass with water in it