I have a feeling that this doesn't work as well with adults as it does with kids. My theory being that kids are a lot more relaxed than adults in general, but give it a go anyway or at least get your kids to try it.
Maybe the more correct explanation is that kids are more willing
to act foolish? So stop being so self-conscious already!
Try to
relax your jaw and then hold your teeth loosely together. Now hum.
Hummmmmmmmmmmmmm! Can you feel your teeth buzz? If you can then try to
change the pitch of your humming. At some point you should encounter the
natural frequency of your jaw and then the volume will increase noticably
inside your head.
Sort of feels like the dentist is drilling your teeth. Ewwwww!
Ron <rwconti@midtel.net>
Esperance, NY USA - Saturday, March 29, 2003 at 10:47:36 (PST)
Levitating Glowsticks: to do this you need a friend, two cyalume chemical glow sticks (the kind that you snap and shake), and a strobe light. Place the strobe light at about waist level pointing toward you and stand about six feet away from it. Now ask your friend to stand about one foot in front of the strobe and face you. Now turn off all the lights in the room and start the strobe at a medium-to-fast rate. If your friend starts moving the glow-sticks in circles or whatnot, and you did everything right, it should look like your friend is standing completely still and the glow sticks are moving of their own volition. Freaky!
Sean <Yoda448@yahoo.com>
Savannah, GA USA - Friday, March 21, 2003 at 00:53:51 (PST)
Get a large sheet of card, about 12" square. Hold it vertically, at arms' length, in front of you. Now say "Ahhhhhhh" and pull the card towards and away from your face, keeping it vertical. You get weird echoes and doppler shifts.
Chris
USA - Thursday, March 13, 2003 at 11:54:33 (PST)
First,draw a cat and a dog,so that they are on oppasite sides of your paper.Nowfocus on the dog(on the left)and move the paper from side to side(keep focusing on your dog).The cat should dissepear.This is because you all have a blind spot in your right eye,where your nerves don't quite connect,so you can't see in that spot!!!!
Herman <joscul@lycos.com>
b'ham, al USA - Wednesday, March 12, 2003 at 12:16:16 (PST)
LIGHT YOUR BODY UP 1. fist stand up in an open area spread your arms straight out to the side.then swing your arms back and forth without moving your legs(you must be doing this fast for it to work) if done right it feels like volts are going all through your body
boosenhower <boosenhower@yahoo.com>
springfield, mo USA - Wednesday, March 05, 2003 at 15:10:34 (PST)
Something to relieve the boredom while your waiting in a long line in the turn lane at a traffic light.
First, if you can see the
tailights of several cars ahead of you try watching the turn signals and
notice that for a few moments the flashers will be perfectly in sync for
several cycles, then gradually they will start to go out of sync until
they will then flash opposite each other in perfect sync for several
cycles. If the traffic in the turn lane is really long and the light
takes a really long time to change, you will see this pattern repeat
itself several times over.
Next, look at only the car in front of
you and first blink your eyes at a pace that will create the illusion that
the signal is on all the time. Now blink your eyes so that the signal
appears to be out all the time.
Great activity to entertain the
family when you're going for a drive. Otherwise if you're alone look
around and notice that the people in the car next to you staring at you!
Ron <rwconti@midtel.net>
Esperance, NY USA - Saturday, March 01, 2003 at 19:14:19 (PST)
This one is a little dangerous so be carefull. You need a decently strong acid, some new pennies, a file, and a glass jar. gently file the edges of the pennies until you see the silver of the zinc core just under the surface. Drop the pennies into the jar and gently add the acid. you'll see the edges begin to bubble. give it some time and the zinc will be totally eaten by the acid leaving the copper skins. a good way to get rid of the acid is to super dilute it with a gently running sink or garden hose. obviously keep your eyes away while doing the pouring or diluting.
Tom Fagan <drtom@fast.net>
lansdowne, pa USA - Friday, February 28, 2003 at 17:15:33 (PST)
1) I used to have a TV next to my bed and do this all the time. It probably works better with older televisions than newer ones. Rub your socked feet on the carpet, or under your blanke to create static electricity & then write on your television with your finger. Whatever it is that makes the TV set glow will glow from the electricity from your finger.
2) Take some good ole plastic wrap, like you use to cover the turkey after
Thanksgiving, and an old flourescent bulb - the long thin kind. Carefully
(without breaking the bulb) go into a dark room & rub the plastic wrap
quickly back and forth on the bulb. It will make it glow. So will static
electricity. We could probably light the world if we just carried around
flourescent bulbs & the world was carpeted.
3) Close one eye and point your index fingers at each other around a foot
or two away from your face. Then move them towards each other. They'll
probably miss because we depend on both eyes for proper depth perception.
4) Look straight foward and keep your eyes focused foward. Then take your
finger and hold it horizontal a couple of feet from your face. Then
*slowly* raise it while looking straight ahead. It will disappear. Might
work better if you keep one eye closed. There's a blind spot on the eye
where your optical nerve connects to it.
5) While lying in bed, lie on your side. Then close one eye. Then the
other (open the first one). You'll see very different versions of nearby
things. Similarly, put your index finger about an inch from the bridge of
your nose and look at it... Your eyes won't be able to put the picture
together to form a 3d image becuase they're looking at such drastically
different parts of your finger.
6) Look at a ceiling fan & spin your eyes so it follows the blade of the
fan. If it's slow enough & you're fast enough you should be able to watch
the blade as it goes around.
MarkTAW <spam@marktaw.mailshell.com>
Brooklyn, NY USA - Thursday, February 27, 2003 at 23:49:15 (PST)
Ok, so you need a dark room, a tv (with the power OFF), and a camera with a flash (most cameras will still flash without film in them, so you don't have to waste rolls of film). Now make a shadow puppet, or have a friend make one, in front of the blank tv screen (about 6 inches away). Then, CLOSE YOUR EYES* and snap off a flash from the camera, so that the shadow puppet's shadow gets cast onto the tv screen. Have fun ;)
*if you don't close your eyes, you'll have to wait for your eyes to make
the adjustment from the camera flash back to the darkness, and you'll miss
the effect.
Steve
Rapid City, SD USA -
Friday, February 21, 2003 at 01:08:19 (PST)
THE REALLY ANNOYING HORSE COUGH TRICK: To do this, place your lips in an "O" shape on the back of your hand, and making sure that the fixture is air-tight, relax your hand on your mouth (might work better with your head looking up and your hand resting on your mouth then). Make a loose fist and cough. If you did it right, you should sound like a horse or a really old engine. Try this with your voice in the background of one of your coughs. This can really tick people off!
Starfisch
USA - Tuesday, February 11, 2003 at 19:31:45 (PST)
Floating hot dog and floating finger trick:
Looking at a wall, place your index fingers pointing directly at each other on a straight line, just in your peripheral vision range. Keep the tips about an inch apart, and see what happens when you move your fingers closer together!
Starfisch
USA - Tuesday, February 11, 2003 at 19:27:06 (PST)
I haven't seen this, so I decided I'd submit it. This trick works with the corners of very tall things like buildings and select structures on fairly cloudless days. On the ground, stand at a point where you can only see one corner of a building or structure. Focusing on that exact point at the corner, slowly back away. FREAKY! If you did it right, the building looked like it was going to collapse on you!
Starfisch
USA - Tuesday, February 11, 2003 at 19:24:07 (PST)
Take any cold object and any warm (not hot,) object and place them next to each other. Touch them at the point where they meet and it will feel burning hot. One method to do this is to get 2 tubs with drain stoppers. Attach thin copper tubes to each stopper and wind them into alternating coils (like 2 springs pushed together.) Then fill one tub with ice water, and the other with warm water. Open both stoppers, wait a moment to let the copper tubes adjust then grab the springs. Actually learned this in a basic phsychology class. Nerve ending can only detect cold and warm, not hot. So, hot is actually determined if both nerves fire simultaneously.
Pheonix
USA - Saturday, February 08, 2003 at 02:18:30 (PST)
In a room that has slow ceiling fan, look at the fan and close your eyes. Blink "in reverse" by opening then closing your eyes for a moment to get a tiny flash of vision, thus creating your own personal strobelight! Try to make the fan "stop" by blinking at the same frequency as the fan rotates. Helps if one of the blades of the fan is different in some way, damaged, dirty etc. Can be done with any slowly rotating object. A variation is to do this when a passenger (NOT THE DRIVER!) in a car and going past evenly spaced light poles, roadside markers etc. Look out the side window and try and time your blinks to 'freeze' the poles in your vision.
Mark
Brisbane, QLD Australia - Monday, February 03, 2003 at 04:18:09 (PST)
If you wear glasses for distance vision and have misplaced them, you can make a pinhole lens by curling your first finger to make a TINY square hole formed by the segments of your finger. Curl the thumb around the first finger to to stabilise it. Look through the tiny hole for improved vision. When you learn to do it with both hands - instant pinhole glasses!
Mark
Brisbane, QLD Australia - Monday, February 03, 2003 at 04:02:07 (PST)
Here's a new one- Get a Leyden jar(I'm sure there's plans for one somewhere on this website). Hook one end to the earth (the screw on an electrical outlet works great) and hook a wire to the other end. Make a spark gap between both sides of the capacitor. Now turn on an old TV or monitor and collect the static electricity generated with the open wire. Sparks! You can make around 10 or so, depencing on the CRT, humidity, etc... - jimbo
The Havoc Wreakers Associated
leonard, tx USA - Wednesday, January 29, 2003 at 16:30:16 (PST)
run down the up escalator and stare at every body and stop at the bottom and ride back up backwards then repeat.
T <SSJjudge@aol.com>
K, KS USA - Saturday, January 25, 2003 at 19:07:46 (PST)
If you come up to an unsuspecting victim(heh,heh,heh) and stare at them with an emotionless expression for an extended period of time, very interesting results transpire. I have forced people to run in fear and seen people have a mental breakdown because of this.
Also, try to
talk whilst breathing IN, and you will sound something like frog(its
pretty cool).- jimbo
The Havoc Wreakers
Associated
leonard, tx USA - Thursday, January 23, 2003 at
17:45:55 (PST)
THE PHANTOM LETTER--- first, position your head directly above your keyboard and about 6 inches away. focus on a letter for about 15 seconds, now try to focus behind the letter. a phantom letter will appear beside the one you concentrate on.
skitsomunkey <skitsomunkey_dmanz@yahoo.com>
salina, ks USA - Tuesday, November 26, 2002 at 13:00:35 (PST)
Telephone in Stereo
I discovered this when I was a teen playing around with a friend's cordless phone. It requires that you have a cordless phone and a regular phone that share one phoneline. Hold the cordless to one ear and the landline phone to the other ear and hold a conversation. The other person's voice seems to come from inside your head! I think it's surprising because just because it's so unexpected.
mazeone <mazeone@someplace.with.no.spam.cmo>
Silver Spring, MD USA - Thursday, November 14, 2002 at 10:07:22 (PST)
Play your head. I actually saw the late comedian Shelly Berman do this on a variety show.
Hold your mouth open as if it froze while you
were exclaiming the expression "OH!" Now just strike the top of your head
in time with your chosen song while you alter the resonance of the chamber
you created by holding you mouth open and contracting or relaxing the
muscles in your throat and reshaping your tongue to the notes of your
favorite song. "Singing" the song in your mind helps to get the proper
pitch for the notes.
Try something simple for your first tune. I
imagine that the William Tell Overture would be it little overwhelming and
painful for your first performance. Besides you don't want to give
yourself a concussion.
Who knows maybe you can get a job in the
rhythm section of a Latin band.
Ronald
Conti <rwconti@midtel.net>
Esperance,
NY USA - Monday, November 11, 2002 at 20:34:41 (PST)
shine a laser pointer thought smoke
SeptenDragon <SSjudge@aol.com>
Kansascity, KS USA - Sunday, November 10, 2002 at 18:15:06 (PST)
If you want to know what it is like to experiance an earth quake simply press on your eyeballs in a pulsating manner.
Rich <Duck@canada.com>
Halifax, Canada - Saturday, November 09, 2002 at 19:16:39 (PST)
The caught in a Face Warp suggestion reminded me of this.
How would you like to have eyes like SpongeBob's Squidward? Find a faucet in your house or a relative or friend's house. The style that works best has a short vertical section just above the aerator and it should be chrome-plated. Buff it up with your sleeve for maximum reflection. Now stand in front of it and slowly move your head up and down while you watch your reflection change shape.
As far as I'm concerned this is better than a fun house mirror.
Moving your head up and down will cause various parts of your face to elongate or shrink in a vertical direction, thus the Squidward appearance to your eyes. Or if you prefer you can make teeth that rival Bugs Bunny's or create a really long forehead for that brainy look. Move sideways and your face will be skewed to the left of the right.
If someone walks in on you while you're entertaining yourself, you're on your own! They always knew you were wierd anyway, right?
Ron Conti <rwconti@midtel.net>
Esperance, NY USA - Friday, November 08, 2002 at 20:53:02 (PST)
Try sticking a post-it note to the forehead of your cat - it will be just like selecting reverse gear on the cat as it tries to back away from the obstruction!.
Paul Smith <karnuvap@hotmail.com>
London, UK - Monday, November 04, 2002 at 08:23:50 (PST)
Using your eyes to take a picture of a room - You'll need a camera flash available. I used one of those old plug in flashers for older cameras so I never ran out of battery power. Sit in a dark room. Make it as dark as you possibly can get it by covering windows and door cracks with blankets or something similar. Spend a few minutes there doing nothing while your eyes adjust to the darkness and become more sensitive. Stare straight ahead at the wall in front of you, or perhaps at another person facing you. Hold the flasher at about waist level facing away from your eyes (in the same direction you are looking) and flash it. Of course the room is dark after the flash goes out but you will see the whole room re-materialize in your afterimage. The clarity of the picture is astonishing and lasts longer than a few seconds. Rest in the dark for a few minutes before doing again to get the best effect. Tell your friend to start making lots of different faces and flash while they do this. You will get a frozen "snapshot" of them which is quite creepy. Try waving your hand in front of your face after the flash. You will swear you have nightvision but cannot see your hand moving. Creepier still.
Buzz
USA - Wednesday, October 09, 2002 at 21:11:19 (PDT)
I guess the brain tends to think of the body and the forces on it as generally symetric. Asymetry can be delt with but can be a shock if unexpected. Try walking across a clean linoleum floor with one bare foot and one foot in a nice, clean sock. The bare foot will get good traction. The foot with the sock will get poor traction. First time I did this (by accident) I almost fell and had to walk very carefully. Both feet in socks seems to be no problem.
Paul <sampunski@hotmail.com>
Eugene, OR USA - Thursday, September 26, 2002 at 14:50:49 (PDT)
1. Do you have a certain blanket or sweatsuit, etc. that comes out of the dryer loaded with static? Turn off the lights in the laundry room and play around with it for a cool light show.
2. Get one of those
Bic pens with the smooth white plastic tube and take the guts out so that
you only have the tube part. On a slick table surface (like formica) lay
the tube in front of you with the ends pointing left & right. using the
index and middle fingers of both hands, press down on the tube extremely
hard (without crushing it) and roll them back so that the tube snaps
forward violently with a lot of backspin. It will fly forward and up in
an eerily smooth motion. very cool, but don't over do it or your fingers
will suffer.
3. I once had a battery charger that came with a wall
wart transformer. The transformer had a 3-way LED. It could be green,
red, or orange depending on the state of the battery in the cradle. The
orange color was created when the red and green were both on at the same
time. I discovered this by 'jiggling' my eyes at the orange light, which
resulted in the green and red lights being separated from each other.
This could only happen if the green and red are not actually on at the
same time, but rather quickly alternate fast enough to create the "orange"
light illusion. If you don't have the ability to jiggle your eyes
voluntarily, you can get the same effect by looking at it while chewing up
a hard candy, or to a lesser extent by waving quickly at the LED so that
it peeks between your fingers. If you have access to one of these "3-way"
LEDs, try this out. It's pretty neat.
John
Richardson <terralos@hotmail.com>
Dallas, TX USA - Wednesday, September 25, 2002 at 15:39:32 (PDT)
The one about cold and wet feeling similar reminded me of something that I read a while ago about hot and cold feeling somewhat alike. Here is an experiment that shows this. The subject sits with his back to the experimenter, who gives the subject several common objects to be felt with his hands behind his back so he can't see them, and he tries to identify them. After doing this a few times, the experimenter says "Lets try something a little different, this time I will place something on the back of your neck, and see if you can tell me what it is."
I should
mentions that while the subject was guessing the first couple objects, the
experimenter or someone near him has been casually smoking a cigarette.
Back to putting something on the subjects neck: the experimenter pulls out
a cylinder of ice about the size of a cigarette, he dries off the end so
it is not wet, and touches it to the back of the subject's neck. I
haven't tried this, but supposedly the subject's first reaction is to
scream because he thinks that he has just been burned by the cigarette!
Thus illustrating that heat and cold sensations are sometimes difficult to
tell apart without other clues.
On another subject, someone here
just mentioned the string and coat hanger experiment, I don't know where I
read this, it might have been on this page, but a louder variation of this
is to use string with an oven rack.
R.H.
OH USA - Thursday, September 19, 2002 at 17:12:58 (PDT)
take a metal coat hanger. tie two pieces of thin cotton thread to the longest, straight side of it. wrap the other ends round your index fingers, put them in your ears. you should have the coat hanger dangling upside down from your fingers. gently bang it into something. huge resonant gongy noises!
adamx
Uk - Thursday, September 19, 2002 at 14:45:38 (PDT)
1 Bowl - Deep enough to hold your hand underwater.
Plastic Wrap - Enough to loosely cover the mouth of the bowl.
Rubber Bands - Large, or bound to each other.
Cold Water - Ice cubes help the effect.
Fill the bowl 75% and cover with plastic wrap. Use the rubberband(s)
around the mouth of the bowl to hold the plastic wrap in place. Be sure
to make the plastic wrap as LOOSE as possible - the goal: place your hand
in the water THROUGH the pastic wrap, without piercing it.
Cold
feels the same as wet, if done correctly, you should really be checking
the plastic after each "immersion" of your hand, just because it feels
like you've broken the seal and gotten your hand all wet.
MUCH
simpler version: Cover your finger in plastic and stick it in a cold drink
- it feels wet.
Jigsaw <Jigsaw2000@Hotmail.Com>
Columbus, OH USA - Tuesday, September 17, 2002 at 12:08:11 (PDT)
Find the center of your head. I discovered this while helping my former wife to hang the wash outside. Take two wooden spring loaded clothes pins. Place one on each ear lobe. It's not that easy, is it? Ouch! While you are adjusting to the pain notice that there is a "wall" roughly in the center of your head where your now tense and fatigued muscules seem to be pulling against equally. Try placing two clothes pins on one ear lobe. Double ouch! Does the "wall" drift to the side with the two clothes pins? Now try something with a little more "bite" to it! Like those big spring clips that students use to hold loose papers to their notebooks. If you're really reckless try clipping your lips together with it! Mmf,Mmf!(Big Ouch!) The things we husbands/fathers do to entertain our families! And it was never apreciated!!! (Pardon me. I'm digressing a bit! I won't let it happen again! This is supposed to be a fun page, not a serious page!)
A similar effect occurs when you
listen to a monaural music source with stereo headphones. Only this time
the "wall" is inside your head and if you focus on the "wall" you can
actually feel the sound "crashing" into itself as it proceeds into your
aural canals. If your stereo equipment allows you to easily switch from
stereo to mono, listen as you switch rapidly back and fourth. The music
will alternately sound as if is outside your head vs. being inside your
head.
Just thought of one more effect while I'm on the subject of
playing with your ears. I'm sure that every child in the world from the
age of four up has thought of this one.
Place the palms of your
hands on your ears with your fingers pointing behind you. Now fan your
ears rapidly while you hum a steady tone. Nice Wah-Wah effect! I
remember that it sounded cool if I did it while my parents were talking.
"I'm not listening to you!" (wah-wah-wah-wah-wah) Wha'dya say Ma?
If you are from the same generation as I am you probably noticed
that it sounds very close to the effect that was used on the keyboard
break of the Who's "We Won't be Fooled Again". Try humming that break
from memory while you fan your ears. Get a friend to fan their ears and
listen while you hum! Does it work as well that way? Switch off. What
fun!
Life can be so much fun with very little investment! Maybe
they should try this at the U.N. We would all get along for a change.
Just picture the scene. All those foreign ambassadors fanning their ears
and humming while listening for the special effects. There would be no
time for hostility. War would become obsolete! Maybe... Humans are very
competitive.
Ronald Conti <rwconti@midtel.net>
USA - Sunday, September 15, 2002 at 06:30:56 (PDT)
get two pens push them against each other for 30 to 45 seconds then slowly make one twist around the other and they will feel like magnets.
Fyreswing Spaz <aj19@earthlink.net>
houston, T.X. USA - Saturday, September 14, 2002 at 20:04:49 (PDT)
Do both of these things. Not simutaneously of course! But you can do the first one right now even as you sit at your computer. As a matter of fact if you have been staring at your monitor for a while it might make it easier to do this.
First, try to work up a good tearful yawn (I
bet you're starting to yawn now just because I suggested it! I am!)
Next position your head so that your face is as nearly parallel to
the the desk or table that you are working at as possible. Look at your
keyboard. Try to keep your eyes open as your eyes start to tear so that
your eylids don't wipe the tears away.
Now make spastic movements
with your head in order to get all the liquid to collect in the middle of
your cornea. keep looking at your keyboard. Voila! Instant contact lens!
Just so you know it may take several days of practice in order to
accomplish this.
If you are nearsighted like I am the tiny little
letters on your keyboard will be in perfect focus but distorted (can't
have everything you know!)
Hey! I just had an idea. The next
time life throws you a curve ball that leaves you in tears, try this.
You'll get so distracted by what you're doing, it may just lift you out of
your funk.
Now do this! I am willing to bet that Gene Roddenbury
or one of his writing staff was inspired to write wormholes into the Star
Trek script as a result of engaging in this wierd behavior.
Get a
short length of rigid copper tubing either 1/2" of 3/4" in diameter.
Make sure it is straight otherwise this either will work poorly or not at
all. Peer into one end of it like a hand held telescope and aim the other
end toward the sky. Not the sun however! I was dorky enough to look at
the sun for a very long time when I was in 7th grade. It wasn't until I
was a freshman in college that the recurring green spot in front of my
eyes finally dissapated completely. Duh!
Anyway what you will see
will closely resemble every image of a wormhole I have ever seen on
Startrek. Try experimenting with different lengths of tubing to see if
the effect changes.
Enjoy! Ron
Ronald Conti <rwconti@midtel.net>
Esperance, NY USA - Saturday, September 14, 2002 at 17:21:22 (PDT)
This is more like a observation about the stars. I find that when I am outside, just before sundown, when the sky is getting dark, I can see a unusual thing. During this time, no stars have yet to appear in the sky, but you can change that. I find that if you stare up into the sky, and stay on that one starless spot, a star will appear directly in your POV. Sometimes it seems like I can choose were the stars appear. Sure, maybe it is pretty impossible to not choose a spot were a star will appear, but it still a fun night time activity.
Jeremy <RecurveTD2@AOL.COM>
Baton Rouge, LA USA - Thursday, March 07, 2002 at 07:04:40 (PST)
The next time you are taking an elevator up, step with one foot as if you were climbing stairs just as the elevator starts to go up. You have exagerate the step and get the timing just right. You'll feel as if you are about to fall down. Some people who do this under the influence will fall down completely.
anonymous
USA - Tuesday, September 03, 2002 at 16:24:24 (PDT)
I know a few people who can do this and have never been able to teach anyone so.. this may not help. What i do is make a really loud pop noise with my tongue. I think what i am doing is creating a vacuum behind my tongue and releasing it or somthing.. I push my tongue to the roof of my mouth then sort of "suck" the air out or maybe itd be better to say pull it out, don't use your lungs but just raise your soft palate and push your tongue to the roof of your mouth harder the pull your tongue back a bit, it should do it. just practice and try my cousin taught me this but i was 5 and don't remember what he said that made me understand it.
Rutir Khan <wtrutir@aol.com>
Huntsville, AL USA - Sunday, September 01, 2002 at 02:10:01 (PDT)
I discovered this after long ASD's and In School Suspension sessions.
Sit down somewhere at a table (works best at school) close your eyes and
put the palm of your hand (the butt bulging part of it at the base of your
palm) into your eyes (right hand to right eye left hand to left eye) and
press in. The pressure wont hurt much but now you can focus better on the
strange shapes and colors inside your eyes. Stare at the colors and shapes
and patterns, after about 10 seconds it starts to hurt but just ignore it
eventually you completely zone out the colors are awesome and you have no
other sensory input. Good to do during boring days of school. When you
look up after your "Inner Trip" everything has that refreshed and renewed,
off color, look.
Logan Davis <SabotStorm@aol.com>
The Woodlands, Texas USA - Wednesday, August 28, 2002 at 15:13:37 (PDT)
For a big spark, place a quarter on top of one of those lightening-ball globe thingies. Hold another quarter in your hand, and bring it close to the first quarter. A continuous purple arc will result. You can burn through paper, gum wrappers, etc. Sometimes the arc wll scramble nearby TVs and radios (I scrambled my friend's sattelite dish in this fashion). If you are in the mood for some self-inflicted disfigurement, touch the quarter on the globe with your finger (without a second quarter). The spark will still result, only this time along with the smell of burnt flesh and a tiny black hole in your finger. This HURTS!
Devlin Baker <Cliffswallow13@cs.com>
Kent, WA USA - Saturday, August 24, 2002 at 23:33:46 (PDT)
Two ideas actually - more mind tricks than physical science.
The first involves the "Unwritten Rule" of elevators. Notice this the
next time you get in an elevator. If one person (you) is alone in the
levator, they will most often stand at the back center. Two people will
take the back corners. The third and fourth people will take the front
corners. After four, the crowd begins to gravitate toward the center, but
not too closely. Now, here's the trick - they all face forward and often
follow this rule. Get onto the elevator, press the button for the highest
floor available. No matter how many people are in the elvator, stand as
close as you can to the center with your back to the doors. For some
reason, breaking the "rules" frightens most people and they will become
very nervous about you and anxious to get off on their floor.
The second mind game involves having someone who either has a high pain
threshold or doesn't mind some pain for a good prank. It also helps if
this person isn't that religious as this trick will definatly get them
banned from a church in a heartbeat. Have the person attend church every
Sunday for a month and approach the preist/pastor/whatever about baptism.
The clergyman will, if he's not suspicious, arrange a date for baptism.
Now it's time to go shopping. Buy a car shammy (a super-absorbant cloth)
and a small bottle of cinnimon oil. Have the person go to their baptism
armed (secretly) with these items. The clergy will talk with them
beforehand about the baptism (make sure that this is one of those "full
body" baptisms, as this is the only real way it will work. When it comes
almost time to enter the pool, your person should excuse themselves to the
bathroom or find some way to secretly do this step. They should dry their
faces completly with the shammy, soaking up any body moisture they can.
They can also, if they wish, do their hands the same way. Then, remaining
completly calm, paint strange symbols on their forehead, cheeks, and hands
(if opted) with the cinnimon oil. Any moisture at all will start the
reaction early, so don't sweat a drop. Enter the pool, keeping the
painted areas free of the water (the cinnimon oil will "dry" clear).
Then comes the moment of truth. The clergyman will dip the person into
the water. The water reacts with the cinnimon oil and causes some pretty
bad pain, but also raises bright red welts in the painted patterns. The
sudden rush of pain will undoubtedly make the person scream and thrash
around and the clergyman and congregation will be treted to a show of
"dark forces" reacting with the "holy water". The welts, of course, are
painful, but not permanant. Since videotaping baptisms is not uncommon
nowadays, you and your friends can have a parank you can enjoy long after
the welts have faded.
Gutter Rat <gutter_r@hotmail.com>
Natchitoches, LA USA - Friday, August 16, 2002 at 00:30:14 (PDT)
If you wear glasses, focus your eyes on a lens, and, if it's bright out you can see behind you (As I type this I am glaring at the trees outside of my window)
Michael Sarojin <Sarojin@GMX.net>
Winnipeg, Canada - Monday, August 05, 2002 at 13:12:04 (PDT)
One fun thing to do is to place a whole bar of soap in a microwave and turn it on for a couple of minutes. watch the soap grow, it should grow to about 10 times its original size, then slice them up into more bars of soap. great idea if your a bit strapped for cash :)
Tineke <teenrocks@hotmail.com>
Auckland, New Zealnd - Sunday, August 04, 2002 at 17:34:58 (PDT)
while laying in bed for about 15 minutes, make sure your eyes are used to the darkness and shut one hard and put your hand over it and turn on the light and wait till the non-covered eye gets used to the light. now, turn the light off and open your other eye. one eye will have night vision and one will not! feels weird. to erase effect, turn the lights back on or wait a few minutes.
Greg Olsen <nolimits99@hotmail.com>
chicago, ILL USA - Thursday, August 01, 2002 at 01:20:47 (PDT)
Look up at the ceiling, close your eyes, and spin around really fast for 30 to 45 seconds. Open your eyes and walk around, it feels like your drunk.
Weston <smartguy362@yahoo.com>
Fort Worth, Tx USA - Sunday, July 28, 2002 at 01:47:46 (PDT)
Go into a dark room. Close your eyes. Place index finger of each hand on the top of each eyelid. At the same time lightly press and rub each eyelid, while looking down at your toes. Watch the white light flash...
Ken L
USA - Wednesday, July 24, 2002 at 19:14:05 (PDT)
Let a friend hold out his/her hand (palm up) and make a fist, ask your friend to make the fist as tight as possible.
Then you take the fist in your hand and with the other you take the wrist.
While holding the wrist use your thumb to press on the wrist so you lock
of the vains and keep al the blood from entering or leaving the fist.
With your other hand you can now rub the remaining blood out of the fist.
Now let your friend open his/her hand and it will look pretty pale (no
more blood inthere at all), now release the vains to let the blood into
the hand again, this wil feel very weird, you can actualy feel the blood
flowing through your hand.
As an aditional visual effect you can pretend to "pull" the blood back
into the hand by making a grabbing motion above the hand without (or just
slightly) touching the palm of the hand. Have fun
OmeJozz
OmeJozz <omejozz@wanadoo.nl>
Leiden, Holland - Friday, July 19, 2002 at 08:04:54 (PDT)
Here's a really good one.
When you find yourself in a slightly reflective room ( ie a room which has
lots of wood of hard surfaces and not one with lots of soft furnishings,
sometimes a tiled toilet is good, clench your teeth gently and hum,
starting with a high pitch and gently bending the note so that it gets
lower not in volume but in pitch.
Depending on conditions you will hear the resonant frequency of that
particular room and the hum will reverberate inside your head and cause
great annoyance to anyone nearby.
Paul
<paulpreilly@hotmail.com>
USA - Sunday, July 14, 2002 at 07:57:08 (PDT)
You know those bright green led lights you find on cookers, vcrs, alarm clock radios etc?
Well if you stand a little way away from
them and stare then poke out your tongue and blow a raspberry, quite
magically the led numbers will appear to dance the dance of life and
light. It truly is a beautiful sight and possibly one the eight wonders of
modern science.
My wife and I frequently, untill we were both
barred, take trips to our local bank and stand in front of the currency
converter board with flasks of coffee and sandwiches spellbound by this
most fascinating display.
Paul <paulpreilly@hotmail.com>
USA - Sunday, July 14, 2002 at 06:47:06 (PDT)
Belch smoke.
You need to practice swallowing air to start with. This is hard to
describe, you just have to try different techniques while you're in front
of the TV or doing the dishes. What you do is blow out your cheeks and
force the air in this reservoir backwards down your food tube (not your
air tube). Once you've mastered this, practice burping up the stored air
on cue. You should be able to produce good long belches. I can say the
alphabet on a lucky day or aided by some gassy beer.
For the
smoke, simply take a big drag from a cigar (preferably) into your mouth
reservoir and force it backwards into your stomach, as before. Discard the
cigar. You can hold the smoke there for a bit before letting rip with a
long, loud and magically smoky belch. An amazing party trick.
Not sure of the cancer implications with this - it's up to you!
TOM <tom.cutler@btinternet.com>
Brighton, UK - Tuesday, July 09, 2002 at 09:05:08 (PDT)
I could not teach anyone to do this before, but here it goes: squeeze your lips, pretend you are smiling on one side of your face - this should produce a little crack in your lips on one side of your mouth - I do it on the left side. Start inhailing while tightening the lips - this should sound like a really annoying fly buzzing around. Very realistic!!! [DOH! I forgot all about this one! Also, besides making a horsefly sound you can tighten your lips and make some annoying "mosquito" noises (it helps to hold your breath and just suck with your cheeks.) You can even make a "mosquito swarm" by opening slots in opposite edges of your lips, then practice insect sounds in stereo. As a kid I used to torment my little brother with this. -bill b.]
Mak <rand3289@yahoo.com>
NY USA - Monday, April 03, 2000 at 10:45:30 (PDT)
This is my favorite thing to do! (science-wise)...
It's an eye/mirror trick. Look at yourself in a mirror. (bear with me, it is scarey sometimes). Get your face very close to the mirror. Cup one of your hands and place it above your eye brow then scoot in until your hand is touching the mirror. Watch your pupil in your eye it will get big. Then scoot out again, the pupil will get small again. Scoot in and out and watch it happen. It means that when it gets dark, your pupil expands so you can see. ALSO TRY...just standing in a room looking straight forward, tell someone to watch your eyes and then look straight up into a light. The same thing will happen. It's interesting when people see it and comment about it.
T. T. <geminitif@yahoo.com>
South Jordan, UT USA - Friday, July 05, 2002 at 10:28:05 (PDT)
Look in the phone book for 2 people that would seem to be related - like a strange last name, or a junior and senior. Using 3 -way calling, dial 1 of them, then while that is ringing, quickly call the other one. They will answer their phones, assuming each had called the other, and start their conversation. Now- the fun part - you have to be quiet on your end, but occasionaly say something like - God wants to talk to you - The results can be hilarious. I used to do this before caller ID was popular.
Joe Cool
USA - Tuesday, July 02, 2002 at 16:19:55 (PDT)
For this trick, you need a friend an a pool. Once both of you are inside the pool, tell your friend to hold his arm straight up in the air with his fingers together, slightly cupped at the thumb and pinky, and his palm facing straight ahead. While you are underwater, have your friend (still keeping his arm straight) slap the surface of the water as hard as possible. Above water, this produces a smacking noise, but underwater, you should hear a metallic ringing - sort of like tennis balls being hit with a metal racket. Hours of amusement!
Also, if you have some thick chalk (probably a good 1/2 inch thick) lying
around the house, go outside and drop it on the pavement. Surprisingly, it
makes the sort of sound you'd associate with a ceramic plate being dropped
on the ground, but a lot quieter. Have fun :)
Darya <thedarya@yahoo.com>
Woodbine, MD USA - Saturday, June 22, 2002 at 18:18:20 (PDT)
I just found out that the oil that is so readily present on a person's forehead will dissolve beer foam. A little smeared at the top of a beer bottle goes a long way towards preventing a head overflow!
TheFamousYaksha
USA - Wednesday, June 12, 2002 at 05:11:58 (PDT)
Here is a thing to try in a ski lodge when it is snowing hard. It works best in areas without a lot of trees or reference points, and when it is snowing hard and fast. It also works best looking out a window with a frame in your vision.
Simply stare out the window at the falling snow, letting your eyes focus
on infinity. Soon, you will get the distinct sensation that you are rising
up through the snowflakes rather than the snowflakes coming down.
This is due to essentially a shortcut the brain does from
information overload.
Keineth <foo@bar.com>
Seattle, WA USA -
Monday, June 10, 2002 at 17:26:58 (PDT)
This is a variation on the lighter flint trick already listed (pull apart a lighter, wedge the flint in the spring, heat the flint with a lighter until it glows). I find that this works best when you throw the glowing flint hard against something like concrete or a brick wall, rather than just flicking it. My cousin scared the hell out of me showing me this trick for the first time, by lighting it and throwing it against a wall inside the house. I thought the house was on fire! ;) But it just left a brown spark-shaped mess on the wall (which came off with a damp cloth) and one or two small burn marks in the floorboards (I'm not sure I'd advise anyone to do it inside!!)
Amy Lewis <spam@admm.com.au>
Melbourne, VIC Australia - Monday, May 27, 2002 at 18:53:37 (PDT)
Become a knife-thrower
...but use screws, nails, carpenter staples, etc. The trick is to spin them like a football. See Lenny R's Page about this.
W. Beaty <`">
`>Seattle, WA USA - Monday, May 27, 2002 at 11:11:17 (PDT)
The 'Terminator Effect': Clench a fist tightly for a period of 45 seconds, then slowly relax without actually opening your hand. Once you have fully relaxed your grip, attempt to open your hand as slowly as possible and see what happens. Your Carpals and Metacarpals will move in a peculiar mechanical-like fasion.
Ironhand <not@thistime.com>
Snoit, MN USA - Saturday, May 11, 2002 at 23:29:58 (PDT)
Got these on a 'fun science' tv show:
-Get a fish tank and dry ice. Put the dry ice into the empty tank, and as
it melts it turns into carbon dioxide. You can also use baking soda +
vinegar to get the carbon dioxide. You can test the level of CO2 by
putting a lit match into the tank; when it goes out, that's where the CO2
starts.
Now, blow bubbles into the tank! The bubbles sink until they reach the
CO2, where they float as if they're on an invisible layer of water!
-this likely has been said; it's pretty common. Have an empty soda can,
fill the very bottom with a bit of water. Set it on the burner to boil
and fill the can with steam. In the meantime, get a bowl filled with
water, and put some ice cubes in to make it cold. Then, with salad tongs,
take the can and turn it upside-down into the cold water. the whole thing
crushes from the weight of the atmosphere!
-Melt styrofoam! It doesn't really melt, it just gets rid of the
structure (like soaking a piece of bread). Put those packing peanut
things into a jar of acetone (?)--or fingernail polish remover.
ryan weh <urthskape@flashmail.com>
provo, ut USA - Sunday, May 05, 2002 at 18:52:33 (PDT)
I can't believe nobody's mentioned this yet. Maybe I'm the only one who's seen it (doubtful) Anyway, here it is:
This works best for people with long hair. Right after you get out of the
shower, while your hair is still dripping wet, go into a room that is sort
of dark with only one light source (i.e. the sun shining through a window)
Sit with the light source off to one side of your body, and stare at a
drop of water on one of your hairs that is hanging in front of your face.
It helps to have it really close to your eye, and only look through one
eye at a time. The water acts as a microscope and you can actually see
the cellular structure of your hair. Try it with a droplet on a wood
table surface, you have to get really close to it so its not totally in
focus. Unbeliveably cool when you first see it.
Don D
Peoria, IL USA - Saturday, May 04, 2002 at 02:45:51 (PDT)
Go into a dark room where you can still barely see, Look at a light on the roof (the light has to be off!) keep staring then unfocus you're eyes and there goes the light!
Bob the builder <bob@buildermail.com>
USA - Monday, April 29, 2002 at 00:20:35 (PDT)
While looking at your face's reflection in a large mirror, stare at the reflection of one of your eyes. Keep staring for a minute or so. It is important that you don't look away from your eye's reflection even for as moment. Your face's reflection will start to blur and fade (except for the eye you are staring at) - your mouth and nose will seem to disappear leaving a featureless "skin-face". Creepy...
Dan Beerstecher <beerst88@rogers.com>
Canada - Sunday, April 28, 2002 at 14:03:59 (PDT)
Are u ever tired of having detiontion??? Well i was so stoll detintion slips from a teach. And wrote him up To see his face is price less. Make some thing goo up on the detionion slip.
George richard <gjr882007@yahoo.com>
Fort Benton, Mt USA - Wednesday, April 17, 2002 at 13:04:04 (PDT)
Haven't seen this one mentioned...
On a really cold day (-20 degrees F), heat a cup of water to near boiling, take it outside and toss it hard into the air (the water, not the cup). Creates an impressive cloud of steam and a loud hissing sound - hardly any water hits the snow - pretty cool. I've wanted to try it with a 5-gallon pail of water, but I don't know if I could throw the water hard enough (or safely enough).
Also, try filling one of those super-soakers with near boiling water and firing it outside on a really cold day. Great fun.
kedirekin <kedirekin@hotmail.com>
Minneapolis, MN USA - Tuesday, April 09, 2002 at 18:41:08 (PDT)
Had fun with this as a small(er) kid while my family's house was being re-shingled...
Get a thin (1/4" to 1/8") piece of wood about 16" long and 2" wide. Take it outside. Hold it by the middle of the long edges. While holding the wood, orient your hand so your thumb is below your finger. Now throw the wood forward and slightly down while giving it backspin with your finger as you let go.
The wood should fly a few feet forward and then rise up into the air. With practice you can get it to do a sort of boomerang thing where you throw it forward and it goes up and then backwards over your head and then you can catch it behind you.
Might be fun to try with a piece designed for this - maybe put little circular stablizers on the ends so it doesn't flip around or something.
Chris <cwarren@lorax.org>
Williamstown, MA USA - Monday, March 25, 2002 at 11:59:57 (PST)
Take some acid and see what happens, alot of the above affects will be experienced
Dr Kavorkian <not@thistime>
Rochester, USA - Wednesday, March 20, 2002 at 15:36:46 (PST)
Write out a list of color names, (works best if written on computor) but when writing the word *Yellow* for instance, put the color of the word in green! Write a whole page on this, and it'll take the readers twice as long to read it!
Mia <muhreah@hotmail.com>
n/m, n/m Canada - Wednesday, March 20, 2002 at 13:32:08 (PST)
buy a turkey call and use it in hunting stores
Septen Dragon <SSJjudge@aol.com>
sanumatri, Fy Atlantis - Sunday, March 17, 2002 at 06:42:14 (PST)
Crouch down on the floor and deeply inhale and exhale through your mouth about 20 times. Then quickly stand up and immediatly hold your breath. You will pass out for 5-10 seconds. When you wake up again your whole body feels tingly. It is best to do this with your back to a bed, couch, etc. so that when you fall you don't hit your head on something and really knock yourself out!
Christina <cmspruill@hotmail.com>
VA USA - Friday, March 15, 2002 at 12:06:56 (PST)
Here's a couple of mind games:
1. Look for a coin (usually a small denomination works well). See how long it is before you find one.
Then convince yourself that people drop coins all the time, and that there's loads of them everywhere. See how long it takes to find a coin now.
Then convince yourself that by looking for coins, you're making the coin appear magically. See how long it takes to find another coin.
Add more of these experiments, until you can decide which is the best way to find coins.
2. the number 23 is a magic number, because all numbers are related to it in some way (e.g. 5 is 2+3, 4763 gives you (6-4 = 2) and therefore with the three, that's 23, 6 is 2x3, 4 is 2 squared, and 2/2 is 1, so there's another 23, and so on). Look for 23s everywhere, and try to figure out why that number is so special.
these two are both exercises in metaprogramming - great fun if you learn to do it to other people ;)
blades <allanj13@hotmail.com>
covenry, UK - Tuesday, March 12, 2002 at 10:04:01 (PST)
Bite down on both your little fingers, applying pressure in the middle of each nail. Do not bite so hard that it hurt, but do apply a good amount of pressure. After 30 seconds, hook your pinkies together and quickly pull them against each other. Weird eh?
AC
USA - Monday, February 25, 2002 at 14:22:12 (PST)
I've done this trick for ages. It's always been successful at completely grossing people out. Place both hand palm sides together. Make your thumbnails face your lips. Cover your nose entirely with your fingers, and put your thumbs in your mouth. Put your thumbnails behind your teeth. Make sure nobody can see that your thumbnails are behind your teeth. Announce that your nose feels weird and that you think you need to "pop" your nose. Make a large gesture with your hands as if to "pop" your nose and at the same time, snap your fingernails with your teeth and say "Ahhh, that's much better." Then say that you're only able to do this once. People generally groan or look stricken when you do this.
Stacey
Carlsbad, NM USA - Sunday, February 17, 2002 at 10:31:51 (PST)
Flash yourself in the eyes with a camera and go look in the mirror.
Joshua Davis <Joshypoopoo_13@yahoo.com>
Ellsinore, MO USA - Monday, February 11, 2002 at 13:59:24 (PST)
I love this stuff. People should post here more often. I collect wierd tricks, so I'll try and give some potent ones.
1) If you have a glasspipe, try letting the gas from a lighter into it for a while. Now spark it. Fire will travel elegantly through the pipe for an amazing visual display. Once you get good, you can make all sorts of pyrotechnic effects. One technique I do that impresses even people who already know the glasspipe trick. I let a fair amount of gas into the pipe. Just enough to fill it, not so much that it pours out and definately not enough to smell it. Then I spark it in such a way that a fire stays steady at the opening and doesn't travel through the pipe. (its intuitive for me, I don't know exactly how.) Now blow gently into a different opening. So if the fire is in the mouthpiece, blow in the carb or bowl. It makes a flamethrower. Its nice to pull on experienced people because of the psychology: They see some lame inferior thing and are dissapointed ("that's it?") Then a spectacular thing they've never seen before! The contrast makes it even cooler.
2) Hook up a video recorder so whatever you point the camera at ends up on the tv/monitor in real time. Now point the camera at the tv. Its best if theres just one second screen, slightly smaller than the first real one. Play around. The feedback can get really wild. Wave your hands in front of it and see what happens. It seems every camera does something different. Try it with multiple cameras if you have acess to them. If you can figure out how to do more than one simultaneously that could be really neat. Don't forget to record when it gets good.
3) A little shortened version of an essay by Dali:
Automatic writing is the most direct of Surrealist technique. Sit at a table with pen and paper put yourself in a receptive frame of mind and start writing, Continue writing without thinking about what is appearing beneath your pen, Write as fast as you can. If, for some reason,the flow stops; leave a space and immediately begin again by writing down the first letter of the next sentence. Choose
this letter at random before you begin, for instance a 't'and always begin this new sentence with a 't'.
4)This one is my own discovery:
Interesting mental states can be evoked with strobelights.I have a bright strobe which, according to the guy who gave it to me, is the kind strippers use. While experimenting with it, I found that if I put it in just the right places and set it to the right frequencies around my eyes, I could have intense visual and perceptual hallucinations. I would put it on my forehead or rest it near my nose and the strobe would start to distort my perceptions. Colored blobs
organize to form scenes that were strangely familiar. The wierd thing is that I would feel as if I actually there in some very surreal locations with real things happening. I would feel as if I could sense the wind in a grass field. A wierd halo of stale inaudable sound hung over the scenes. I felt as if I could hear what was happening, but I don't recall actually hearing anything. There are some extremely
bizarre things that I've experienced with the light, but a word of caution. When you find a sweetspot (good angle), don't go too far into it or the visions will come too fast and you may convulse. That is not so pleasant once the novelty wears off.
Feel free to e-mail me if you have more.
The Famous Yaksha <Splendis@hotmail.com>
USA - Saturday, February 09, 2002 at 07:03:13 (PST)
hold your index fingers in front of your face at eye level, about an inch apart. cross your eyes as if your looking far away. Now slowly bring your fingers together so the points will touch. but a third finger suddenly appears in between them! Wierd, huh?
Possum Man
USA - Thursday, February 07, 2002 at 15:30:46 (PST)
just thought i'd tell you all, When my science teacher made the above described lava lamp, she accedentally used a beaker that had been in the freezer overnight. the whole thing shattered on the burner and a flame about a foot high shot into the air. it didn't shatter outwards luckily. we were sitting on the floor around the counter when it happened. it was pretty cool.
Possum Man
USA - Thursday, February 07, 2002 at 15:17:46 (PST)
Make your own lava lamp! fill a glass beaker halfway with water. pour cooking oil on top of that until half of the space left from the water is filled (a fourth of the original volume). Now put the whole thing on to heat. Although you may have to reverse the ingredients. it might be oil then water. i cant remember, but if you do get it to work, cool, huh?
Possum Man
USA - Thursday, February 07, 2002 at 15:08:59 (PST)
take someone elses hand and put your hands so that your palms are touching and your fingers match up, like you just gave them a high five but stopped just as your hands hit. now run your forfinger and thumb of your other hand repeatedly up (not down) both sides of your matched middle fingers. You can "feel" the other persons finger.
Possum Man
USA - Thursday, February 07, 2002 at 14:55:44 (PST)
Fun Ideas for Storm Globes ( those glass globes w/ the pinkish blue orb) Okay, when you are really bored in the summer, you come up with weird stuff. I have one of those storm globes and we starting doing experiments. Turn on the globe, turn it on high intensity and place your hand on the globe and let someone else very lightly run their fingers across certain parts of your hand. You get an intense, almost painful tingling. If you really want someone to shout, then try touching their ears, toes, nose and teeth. Ouch! Also, if you place something like a piece of bread or a banana and lightly run your finger across, you can see little bluish white sparks. Don't try this at home, but I know this works for some other animals because I let my rat stand on top of the globe and we touched her tail. She let out a *Squeak!* and raced up on my shoulder. Poor thing. ( NOTE: I have one of those older globes, I've tried it with some of the normal ones and it doesn't seem to work)
Sophie <pinkpurplechic@yahoo.com>
Great Falls, MT USA - Tuesday, February 05, 2002 at 15:51:15 (PST)
I used to press my eyes with both hands at the same time to see fractal patterns in my retina.... i used to shake my head violently to see little lights that bright very intense in the corner of my eyes field of vision... I used to look to a candle focusing my eyes in it to make the surronding field of vision blurry and allow visions to come i used to look to a bright bulb for some time and use the negative image in my eyes like a laser pointer..i recharged the negative image from time to time.. i used to see like a phantom hand that is grey-blue in color that follows the real hand and acoples to its new position when i move my hand suddenly in dark conditions.. i used to see in high contrast light condition ..the edge of the objets with a red light in one side and blue light in the other i always see since child that the air isnt empty..is full of little energy doots that whirl..these dots are not similar to retinal pieces of cells...these dots move quicly and have grey-blue color..they bright... i believe like someone in this forum that there is something like yoga for the eyes...i thought that lot of us were doing unconsciously it at our chilhood..i would like some information in this aspect,..sorry about my english..thanks
Nacho Seral <mvirt@hotmail.com>
Spain - Monday, February 04, 2002 at 21:59:25 (PST)
I used to have mind altered states with identity lost..or ego dissolution at my chilhood simply repeating myself mentally -who am i?- lot of times...its like lost the sense of a word doing the same...but the word was myself...so....any suggestions?
Nacho Seral <mvirt@hotmail.com>
Spain - Monday, February 04, 2002 at 21:45:07 (PST)
Extend your index fingers at each other in front of your face so that the image is blurry (see that there is a bit of space between your fingers)- Wiggle your fingers slightly while looking at them. Stop. You should see a miniature finger with two fingertips floating in front of your face.
-Ace <dejitaru@doctor.com>
USA - Saturday, January 19, 2002 at 22:36:21 (PST)
Close your left eye. Push your thumb above your right eye into your eyelid, your vision will tilt downward. After a few seconds, all will fade to black. This also works well with both eyes simultaneously or with bottom (along with) top of the eye. If anyone knows why this is, contact me.
-Ace <dejitaru@doctor.com>
USA - Saturday, January 19, 2002 at 22:29:44 (PST)
Lie flat on your back on the ground under a clear blue sky. Better yet, lie on a bench (you may need something to hold onto). Stare at the sky. Imagine that up and down are reversed, and you are hanging suspended over an infinite abyss. Tilt your h ead back slightly and look at the trees and buildings hanging from the ground. Yikes! What if gravity were to suddenly stop working?
Sue <cheezits@innocent.com>
Phila., PA USA - Tuesday, January 08, 2002 at 15:31:58 (PST)
Here's a perception one:
Most folks walk around in what is called "tunnel vision", their attention focused on the center of their visual field. Try this instead: notice that you (while looking straight ahead) can see all the way to the right and left, up down. See how much of
this visual field you can pay attention to all at once, like a big panorama. This is called wide-angle vision.
Now, do this wide-angle vision at night. Hold on to your hats! You should see what appear to be "auras", among other weird movements. The more you practice, the more interesting your nights (and days) get.
Try driving in "wide-angle vision".
Try shooting hoops...you might find your skill increases substantially.
If you get a song stuck in your head, go into wide-angle vision, and it will disappear.
The possibilities are endless....
This is the type of perception (expanded focus and attention) that wild animals and native trackers use. It makes you much more sensitive to the perception of movement, and pumps up your night vision. And does other wacky things, as you'll see.
Willem <willem@q7.com>
Portland, OR USA - Monday, December 31, 2001 at 03:37:46 (PST)
This one will probably only work for the guys or women with deep voices. Close your mouth, look at your computer monitor, and hum in a very low tone. Once you get the tone down low enough, the image on the monitor will begin to flicker and wave back and forth like it does if you try to film it. This works best in a dim room with a monitor whose refresh rate is set slow (~60Hz). For those with access to a computer lab, this looks really cool in a room where you can see a hundred monitors at the same time.
Bart Cilfone <nospam@cilfone.com>
Chicago, IL USA - Saturday, December 29, 2001 at 22:51:56 (PST)
>>>>Take a piece of steel wool and touch it to the poles of a 9 volt battery.<<<<
Do this outside, use super fine wool, and welding gloves or pliers, it catches fire. Then blow on it, molten steel droplets shoot off and spatter on the ground. Keep in mind, this is just as hot as you think it is, and hard to extinguish.
John <weldertan@hotmail.com>
USA - Saturday, December 29, 2001 at 22:31:25 (PST)
these are really cool tricks!!!!
1.take 2 pens (not pencils) push them verry hard aggainst each other for 30 to 45 seconds then SLOWLY pull them apart
u will nottice how the feel stuck
2.stand in the middle of the doorway so you are next to the sides. let you'r hands hang loose beside you then lift you'r hands up towrds the side of the door now press very firmly on both sides of doorway (it is normal if it hirts) for about 30 To 45
seconds now realease the preasure BUT STILL KEEPING YOU'R HANDS TO THE DOOR take a step out with your hands door langth. notice how you'r arms feel like their floting
alex <lyndas3@bellsouth.net>
atlanta, ga USA - Thursday, December 20, 2001 at 23:02:41 (PST)
Good bar bet! Catch a live fly and put it in a bottle of water. Gently shake the bottle until the fly's legs stop kicking. Pour out the water and pour the fly onto a table or bar top. Use a towel to absorb any remaining water. Make sure fly is laying on his back as to appear dead. Bet someone who hasn't seen this preparation that you can bring the dead fly back to life. When bet is secured, pour salt over fly until it is completely covered in a small pile. If you got a good fly, that sucker should start kicking and fly away in a couple of minutes. I'm not sure if this works on anything bigger (bee, bird, bear, human.....) but I'm not going to try it.
Charley L <lancermd@erols.com>
USA - Thursday, December 20, 2001 at 19:45:42 (PST)
An interesting mental trick... Tell someone that you want them to concentrate on the number 6. Let them think about 6 for a few seconds, then ask them to quickly name either a color or a vegetable. Ask for only one of the two.
If you ask them to name a color, they'll probably say orange; if you ask for a veggie, they'll probably say carrot. For some reason, most people subconsciously associate the number 6 with the color orange. Pretty fascinating.
Shaun <shaun@shat.TAKETHISOUT.net>
USA - Thursday, December 13, 2001 at 00:50:12 (PST)
Touch your left-hand fingertips to your right-hand fingertips and move your hands so they look like a spider doing push-ups on a mirror. If you use the right amount of pressure, it will feel as though there is an invisible sheet of glass between your hands. Closing your eyes will increase the effect once you've got it going.
Chris Gross <cgross@erols.com>
USA - Friday, December 07, 2001 at 10:20:13 (PST)
Get one of those old video games were the main object is stationary and the screen is always moving in the same direction. Watch the screen intensely for a few minutes from several feet away in a dimly lit room. Now look to another part of the room. Everything will look like it is moving in the direction of the screen movement. This is really cool if the game is always scrolling down. The room will look like it is sinking.
Jason <shags818@hotmail.com>
USA - Wednesday, November 28, 2001 at 08:15:10 (PST)
Put a piece of dry uncooked pasta in the back of your mouth between your molars. That spiral pasta is the best. Walk up to someone and complain about having a sore neck. Twist your neck to one side and bite down slowly but firmly. "CRRACKKKKK" Aaah. That feels much better.
Phil S <PhilS@altavista.com>
Sac'to, CA USA - Tuesday, November 27, 2001 at 13:58:27 (PST)
As the CEO of your company and a keen watcher of human behaviour, you will take 20cm of white cotton string and swallow 10 cm of it. Leave the other 10cm hanging out of the corner of your mouth. Try to appear totally unaware of the string. Now go about your days business, to work and see the effect this string can have on your friends and co-workes. Who will notice the string first? after how many hours? What happens when you refuse to remove the string?
noby
France - Tuesday, November 20, 2001 at 16:06:57 (PST)
once I slept with a fan on in my roomand the fan went into patterns of vibrating and being still.the next morning I woke up and turned the fan off.I could still here the fan in a very quiet,almost mental sound.the sound was not like the fan but more like the sound of when your ears ring from getting punched in them.you have to sleep with it on ALL night long.it somewhat relates to the after image if you look at somthing bright.
Caleb <Imspacedout2@aol.com>
USA - Friday, November 02, 2001 at 11:08:14 (PST)
Simple, safe and worth a free drink.
Equipment needed:
2 shot glasses
Access to a small sink with running water and plug
Unsuspecting patron/customer/rube
Bar towel (just in case the above mentioned decides to try this trick)
A dime
A butter knife
Plug sink and fill with water (it doesnt matter if water is hot or cold). Youll need just enough water to fill both shot glasses, making sure all air bubbles are out of the glasses. Then bring them together, under water, rim to rim. By this time, you
should have a victim scoped out.
Carefully holding the two glasses together, place them upright and in front of your victim on a flat dry surface with enough room for everyone to view. Trick, bet, or wager them to see if they can get a dime INSIDE the two shot glasses without taking the
glasses off the bar or spilling any water. (Hint, free drink for them if they get this and if not free drink for you if you have to show them). Have to bar towel close by just in case they try. After much mental agony on their part and with their
consent (being your next drink on them) whip out the butter knife from your back pocket and lightly begin tapping just above the rim of the upside down shot glass. Tap the glass slowly and just enough to slip the dime in. Trick? Nope, its all about water
tension!
Gypsy <gypsy_Ore@yahoo.com>
OR USA - Monday, October 22, 2001 at 02:21:33 (PDT)
Get a broomstick. Go outside and make sure you have lots of room around you. Hold one end of the broomstick with both ends, and point the other end straight up into the sky (arms fully extended). Tilt your head back and focus on the point of the broomstick. Spin around in circles, while striving to keep the uppermost tip of the broom centered on one spot. After spinning around 20 - 30 times (have someone else count), drop the broom straight across in front of you (so that it forms a line). Jump over the broom...fun eh?
Greg <gregcollett@hotmail.com>
NY USA - Monday, October 01, 2001 at 10:46:34 (PDT)
Please note that you have listed the following info on your site: Black light bubbles. Add 2% fluorescein sodium solution to your soap bubble mixture, and under a black light the bubbles will blaze with a vivid color. Chad
Byron Swetland <byron@teknobubbles.com>
Gaithersburg, MD USA - Sunday, September 30, 2001 at 23:52:11 (PDT)
Set up a large metal mixing bowel. Put the mike at 0 degrees near the edge of the bowel, put one speaker at 120 and the other at 240. Tap the bowel while adjusting the volume. Just below the volume where you get a lot of feed back and the squeak you should be able to put the bowel into resonance and attain a self sustaining ring.
pat kirol <sunwukong@hananet.net>
seoul, Republic of Korea - Sunday, September 16, 2001 at 02:24:55 (PDT)
Press your eyes closer together and look at something. It appears even more 3D!
Jerry Brownstorm
USA - Monday, September 10, 2001 at 14:14:50 (PDT)
When you finish off that bottle of Everclear 190 proof grain alcohol, put on a couple long sleeved shirts and a pair of safety glasses and a face shield. Place the EMPTY bottle on a flat non-flammable surface and turn of the lights. Take a small flame source and pass it over the mouth of the bottle. Watch as the blue flame passes down through the bottle in a whirlwind fashion to the bottom, then back up and out of the bottle with an angelic whistle! Amaze your friends, especially if they're drunk like you. Hopefully the bottle doesn't explode.
Drunkenbilbo <fliprollum@aol.com>
dilles bottom, oh USA - Monday, September 10, 2001 at 08:58:38 (PDT)
Wierd Eye Bubbles
Go underwater in the swimming pool with a friend, and get face-to-face with your eyes open, so you can see each other.
Hold your nose shut with your hand and blow, keeping your mouth tightly closed. This is the same action used to "pop" or equalize your ears when riding in an airplane.
Careful not to blow too hard!
Blow steadily, from the diaphragm, increasing pressure until mysteriously, a stream of tiny silvery bubbles will start streaming from the inner corners of your eyes. Wierd!
You can practice this before you go in the water of course, holding your nose and increasing the pressure until you feel air start to hiss out of your eyes.
What's happening: Your ears and eyes are connected to your mouth and throat by tubes which help remove excess fluid.
One set of these tubes helps carry away tears when you weep. (this is why you get a salty taste in your mouth when you cry hard)
If you look carefully at the inner corner of your bottom eyelid, you will see a tiny hole. This hole connects with your mouth, so when you increase the air pressure in your head, you can actually make air come out around your eyes.
Wolfrick <ulfrikr@hotmail.com>
Dallas, TX USA - Sunday, September 09, 2001 at 00:09:07 (PDT)
You will need a camera flash.
Go in to a dark room turn out all the lights and wait for your eyes to adjust (about 20 to 30 minutes). turn on the flash and when it's ready place the lens of the flash on the under side of your arm look at you arm where the lens is. close your eyes and fire the flash and the instant you see the flash move the flash and open your eyes while still looking where the lens was and you will see a phosphorescent glow in the shape of the lens on you arm for several seconds the color will be yellowish green.
Flinx <the_flinx@yahoo.com>
USA - Saturday, September 08, 2001 at 20:32:32 (PDT)
The egg in the bottle is removed by holding the bottle upside-down and blowing into the bottle. Try it.
Mark
USA - Monday, August 13, 2001 at 13:34:29 (PDT)
Here's another one that I'm not to sure about.
If you broil the first born of a first born, black cat over an open flame and then crush up the charred remains, the crushed powder will allow you to see demons if you sprinkle it on your eyes.
Fred Harring and Tarek Suliman <jackthecrapper@hotmail.com>
Canada - Monday, August 06, 2001 at 02:11:25 (PDT)
If you find that your pet bunny rabbit keeps trying to hump your foot, there's an easy way to let it get its load off without messing up your leg. What you do is you build a fake girl bunny out of old socks. You stuff the smaller socks into one big sock and tie up the end of the big sock. Leave the sock bunny in with your horney bunny and give em a little privacy (just kidding, they don't need privacy. Instead you take videos and post them up on Something Awful.) He'll lick it and claw it up for awhile, and then go back after your feet when he realizes that it isn't a real bunny. At least he'll leave your feet alone for awhile.
Fred Harring and Tarek Suliman <jackthecrapper@hotmail.com>
Canada - Monday, August 06, 2001 at 02:02:10 (PDT)
I'm not to sure about this one, but, here it goes.
If you place a chicken's egg onto of a pile of dung and incubate the egg with a snake, the egg will apperantly hatch into a cockatrice instead of a chicken.
WARNING: a cockatrice can be very dangerous, it is said to be able turn
people into stone by pecking them and/or looking at them with its Hellish
gaze.
Tarek Suliman and Fred Harring
Canada - Monday, August 06, 2001 at 01:53:45 (PDT)
If you've ever taken any mainstream physics class, then odds are you've already seen this.
Remove a wheel from a bicycle and tie a string to one end of the screw
that passes through the center of the wheel. Hold the wheel in a vertical
position with one hand (by the screw or improvised handle) and give it a
spin with the other. Hold on to the string and release the handle. Wow!
Look at that! The wheel stays vertical while it spins, when it looks like
it should be falling horizontal. It's like it's levitating. There's all
kinds of fun stuff you can do with the levitating wheel as it tries to
walk circles around you as you hold onto the string. You can try to grab
onto the handle again, only to find yourself wielding a crazy wheel with a
mind of it's own.
Fred Harring and Tarek Suliman <jackthecrapper@hotmail.com>
Canada - Monday, August 06, 2001 at 01:48:00 (PDT)
While lying in bed ready to fall asleep, try focusing on that buzzing in your head. It'll get louder as you pay more attention to it. Your brain is like that - the more attention you pay to a stimulus, the more intense that stimulus gets.
Fred Harring and Tarek Suliman <jackthecrapper@hotmail.com>
Canada - Monday, August 06, 2001 at 01:33:01 (PDT)
After keeping your eyes shut for a few seconds/minutes on a sunny day, you might notice something strange after opening them. Try opening one, then shutting it while opening the other. Repeat this, switching from one eye to the other, for awhile. I notice that the image from one eye is tinted red, and the image from the other eye is tinted blue.
Tarek Suliman and Fred Harring <jackthecrapper@hotmail.com>
Canada - Monday, August 06, 2001 at 01:28:39 (PDT)
This is for when jumping on a trampoline with friends. If you time it right so that either you land just after (or before, I forgot. It'll require a bit of experimentation) everybody else, you'll get launched super high in the air while your friends wi ll wind up bouncing super low.
Fred Harring and Tarek Suliman <jackthecrapper@hotmail.com>
Canada - Monday, August 06, 2001 at 01:24:06 (PDT)
NOTE: DO NOT TRY THIS IF YOU FEAR HEART ATTACKS OR LOSING BRAIN CELLS.
Go down to your local pool and hop into a hot sauna (try to avoid steam rooms, it doesn't work as well for some odd reason.) Then you stay in there for a good hour or so (it took me two years of practice to build my heat endurance enough to do this.) Then when your all warm and hallucinating, jump into the shower set it on the coldest temperature you can get.
When your body gets too hot, hemoglobin's ability to bind oxygen is decreased. Your body accomadates for this by increasing blood flow in order to keep up with the oxygen demand. When you jump into the cold shower, your body (and blood) cools off faster t han your brain can regulate the blood flow. So for awhile your body is pumping way too much oxygen rich blood to your head, producing an oxygen high.
It's euphoric and trippy to say the least. It's really cool when they're
playing Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, or the Doors on the pool speakers.
Its kind of like being Gumby after wandering into an unedited copy of
Naked Lunch. You might not want to mess with pool security while high,
though.
Tarek Suliman and Fred Harring <jackthecrapper@hotmail.com>
Canada - Monday, August 06, 2001 at 01:13:10 (PDT)
NOTE: DO NOT TRY THIS. When you get a metal blade jammed deep into a limb or extremity, that limb or extremity begins shaking rythmically and uncontrolably. It just bounces and dances for as long as the blade is left in your flesh. Its probably because the blade has been exposed to nerve endings and the conductive metal suface stimulates the motor nerves. Strangely enough, it didn't hurt one bit when it happened to me, but that may have just have been all in my head.
Fred Harring and Tarek Suliman <jackthecrapper@hotmail.com>
Canada - Monday, August 06, 2001 at 00:59:32 (PDT)
Static Lights, In the winter time (when the air is dry) I'll put a balloon in a old wool sweater and twist it around for a couple of minutes, (a REAL strong charge) then bring it close to a florescent light, and just bringing it close makes the light flicker, after my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I found out that there are extremely weak sparks jumping over a foot!
Chad <Feynmium@aol.com>
MN USA - Sunday, July 22, 2001 at 18:57:57 (PDT)
Balancing plates on sticks. Ever try to do that trick by spinning a frisbee on the end of a wooden dowel? it's amazing how easy it is. You want a heavy frisbee (or garbage can lid) and a long, light dowel...What's even more amazing is using a wet dish cloth! and somehow get the stick to stay at the corner of the cloth.
Chad <Feynmium@aol.com>
MN USA - Sunday, July 22, 2001 at 18:51:01 (PDT)
The New Book of Knowledge says that cracking Iron pyrite (fool's gold) against flint makes sparks, I've tried it and destroyed the fool's gold, no sparks. Has anyone tried it and gotten it to work?
Chad <Feynmium@aol.com>
MN USA - Sunday, July 22, 2001 at 18:41:19 (PDT)
This one comes to you from The Notebooks Of Leonardo Da Vinci; "If you wish to make a fire which shall set a large room in a blaze without doing any harm you will proceed thus, First perfume the air with dense smoke of incense or other strongly smelling thing, then blow or cause to boil and reduce to steam ten pounds of brandy, but see that the room is closed altogether, and throw powder of varnish among the fumes; then seize a torch and enter suddenly into the room and instantly everything will become a sheet of flame."
Chad <Feynmium@aol.com>
MN USA - Sunday, July 22, 2001 at 18:33:45 (PDT)
If chlorine & hydrogen are mixed in the dark, nothing happens. If sunlight is allowed to shine on the mixture, the two gases combine with a loud explosion making hydrogen chloride.
Chad <Feynmium@aol.com>
MN USA - Sunday, July 22, 2001 at 18:25:42 (PDT)
Black light bubbles. Add 2% fluorescein sodium solution to your soap bubble mixture, and under a black light the bubbles will blaze with a vivid color.
Chad <Feynmium@aol.com>
MN USA - Sunday, July 22, 2001 at 18:17:10 (PDT)
Has anyone noticed when you are on a train looking out of the window at the ground, when the train stops you seem to go backwards slowly? why?
Patrick Thomson <thomsonp@edinburghacademy.org.uk>
Falkirk, UK - Wednesday, July 04, 2001 at 08:32:06 (PDT)
This takes two people. Person One holds both hands with palms up while Person Two places his hands on top of Person One's with palms down. Both make eye contact and don't break it. While doing that, person one quickly tries to bring his hand/s from beneath person two's and slap the tops of the hands of person two. Person two's objective is to try to remove his hand/s by sliding them off before being slapped. Remember though, eye contact is essential. This demonstrates peripheral vision and quick reflexes. It's fun. The person who is getting slapped soon develops the skill to remove their hand/s without getting slapped.
abba <bumonie@aol.com>
USA - Sunday, June 24, 2001 at 07:02:34 (PDT)
Get yerself a standard incandescent light bulb,any wattage,burned out or not,as long as the glass is intact.Put it in your microwave on high.After waiting a few seconds for the magnetron to come on line,the bulb will begin to emit every color imaginable. If you leave it in there,it will eventually shatter,BUT NOT IN THE WAY YOU EXPECTED...TRY IT. >>>Whenever you do MW experiments,put in a glass of water to prevent magnetron damage due to reflected energy.
>>>Be careful with MW'd water,it CAN and WILL flash-boil.
>>>IF YOUR MAGNETRON BURNS OUT IT IS ENTIRELY YOUR FAULT,SO USE AN OLD MW OVEN!!!
Andy
USA - Wednesday, June 20, 2001 at 18:30:03 (PDT)
THE ASH TRICK: This is a really simple, yet amazing trick that anyone can do.
Find a dirty ashtray. Seperate out a small pile of fine ashes with your index finger. While you are seperating and crushing the ashes, make sure the tip your index finger gets well coated with them.
After you have a small pile of ash finely ground up and powdered and the
tip of your finger is well coated with fine ash, have your victim hold out
both of his hands with the palms facing down. Take both your hands and
with the index fingers on his palms, grasp his hands with your index
finger under his hand in the center of his palm and your thumb on top. You
will now gently shake his hands and tell him to get them really really
loose and relax. Keep emphasizing how loose they need to be while you are
holding them. At the same time you are doing this, you are using the tip
of your index finger to make a small spot of the ash you picked up while
grinding and making the pile of ash powder under his hand on his palm. If
you have ground the ash fine enough, he will not feel you pressing with
your index finger and applying the spot of ash.
Tell him that when you let go of his hands, he is to make them into super
tight fists and not open it up until you tell him to. Keep shaking them
gently telling him you need him to get looser and looser. Also tell him
that he must make super super tight fists when you let go. This is
important because it distracts your victims thinking. People love magic
and most everyone will want to cooperate with you. It also distracts them
from the fact that the end of your finger is dirty with ash. This is the
only point where the trick can go wrong. Some people don't like dirt and
if they see the end of your dirty finger they will pull away. Try to
extend your ash finger underneath the persons palm once their hands are
out.
When you let go of his hands, he will make them into fists.
Remember, you have planted a spot of ash inside one of his hands with your
index finger while doing the shaking.
Now, tell him to cross his fists one over the other.
After he does this, take your finger and pick up a small amount of ash
from the pile in the ashtray. Take your finger and make a small spot on
top of his hand, the same hand you planted the ash in. Now, he should
have a spot inside his fist and one on top of the same fist.
Now have him cross and uncross his fists several times, you can have him
do all of the gyrations you want, do the YMCA dance, whatever. The longer
you go on the more misdirected he will be and he will forget that you ever
touched the inside of his palm in the first place.
After you have had him do a few gyrations with his fists, have him cross
them one last time and brush the ash from the top of his fist/back of his
hand.
Now have him uncross them. Ask him where the ash is. He will say on the
floor or something like that. Have him turn his palms up and slowly open
his hands.
When he sees the spot of ash inside his hand, he will be amazed. He will
have completely forgotten that you ever touched his hand at all when you
were getting him loose!
Great trick. Hope I have described it properly enough for you to do it.
It will really amaze people and you will have them begging you to tell
them how the ash got inside their fist.
Pocket Aces <cheezerules@hotmail.com>
Anytown, USA USA - Saturday, June 09, 2001 at 02:20:45 (PDT)
Ok, here are two stupid tricks I still love to do. 1. Put a straw between your lips, and start to hum through the straw. Keep fluctuating pitch and eventually you'll hit some frequencies that make most of your head vibrates. Especially useful if you want to do "looking at CTR and TV" tricks without an electric toothbrush or chewing. Don't hit the resonant frequency of your head, though, or it'll explode (just kidding folks)!
2. This one is not for the queesy. Don't come crying to me if you throw up
or pass out. Also, extended head shaking may cause damage (I was once
stuck with a headache for a few weeks after too much shaking), so don't
over-do it. Anyway, get a strobe light and start it going at a moderate
pace. Now, shake your head back and forth real fast for a few seconds then
stop. Things are supers freaky, especially LED clocks. You'll blink, but
the image will stay with you. Don't be surprised if you just wanna slump
over immediately.
Yay for narcotic-less fun!
Robert
Robert Brandin <rabbart@earthlink.net>
Colorado Springs, CO USA - Friday, June 08, 2001 at 21:30:46 (PDT)
Stare at a wall then lightly (at the corners of your eyes the ones farest apart)press lightly. And you will see really weird color and shapes. Hape Fun :P From the warped mind of Travis Gray
Travis Gray <nuclear13@hotmail.com>
Kansas City, KS USA - Saturday, May 26, 2001 at 19:47:00 (PDT)
Stare at a wall then lightly (at the corners of your eyes the ones farest apart) And you will see really weird color and shapes. Hape Fun :P From the warped mind of Travis Gray
Travis Gray <nuclear13@hotmail.com>
Kansas City, KS USA - Saturday, May 26, 2001 at 19:46:08 (PDT)
This is one you can do right now, this very second! If you look at this window, but look through it like a magic eye painting, and at the same time hold the mouse on the up arrow of the scrollbar, with the combination of focusing your vision, and fool ing yourself psychologically, it should be easy to make it seem as if you and the room are moving and that this window is fixed but you are travelling along it. This also works if you stare at a river flowing (you can make yourself believe that the bank is a boat moving along), and if you ever have to do a rubbish factory job, it works well with conveyor belts too.
ninja spice <miko@postmaster.co.uk>
canterbury, kent UK - Tuesday, May 22, 2001 at 10:16:28 (PDT)
Take a laser pen in a drak room then move it realy fast. You'll see a bright white light.
Travis Gray <nuclear13@hotmail.com>
Kansas City, KS USA - Sunday, May 20, 2001 at 13:46:58 (PDT)
Tell your self that spikes are stabbing you back and you spine will feel realy weird.Have fun :P
Travis Gray <nuclear13@hotmail.com>
Kansas city, Ks USA - Friday, May 18, 2001 at 20:03:07 (PDT)
the certs sparks.
if you don't know this it's amazing!
chew a winter-fresh type certs with your mouth open in the dark. sparks happen.
beanpole <zooplancton@excite.com>
san francisco, ca USA - Monday, May 14, 2001 at 15:50:36 (PDT)
small lightning. some of the things you buy from the grocery store come with a re-sealable enclosure that uses glue instead of "zip-lock" technology. turn off the lights, and tear aprt fast......you get static lightning.
beanpole <zooplancton@excite.com>
san francsico, ca USA - Monday, May 14, 2001 at 15:48:46 (PDT)
Okay, here are two that I thought of while reading all the other responses from you weird-o's out there: 1. Fun with Plasma
Take one of those electric "Plasma-Globes" and turn it on high. Now lick your index finger and touch the globe. It reacts pretty much normally. Now for the interesting part: with finger still moist, pull back from the glass...maybe just 1-2 mm. An arc jumps from the glass to your finger!( may burn very slightly) You can even insert a piece of paper between your finger and the globe, and see it burn a tiny hole through the paper. I was able to write my name with electrivity by doing this.
2. Painting the sky
This is irresponsible and should only be done if
you don't necessarily want or expect to get the security deposit back on
your apartment. It's also good to do just before you paint a room.
Okay, here's what you do. Go to the toy store and buy up a whole bunch of
glow sticks. Take them into a closed, dark room, and activate them. Now,
using a knife, cut a SMALL wedge-shaped hole in one. spray the contents on
the wall. Stars!!! Now get crazy and splatter the stuff everywhere. It
actually feels like you are creating a galaxy in your room. This is most
fun when done with a small group of friends in an inebriated state. The
results are absolutely SPECTACULAR. Caveats: 1. Never get the glow
solution in you eyes, or anybody elses. It hurts like a bitch for a long
time. 2. The solution dries MOSTLY clear, but not totally. Do not do this
in your parents bedroom. The solution can also eat through some kinds of
plastics, and stains most materials. Covering things with old sheets
works pretty well. 3. Make sure the holes you cut are very small, as Glow
sticks contain a small glass cylinder which shatters when you activate
them. Shattered glass is not fun.
Daniel Lossner <genepool23@yahoo.com>
San Francisco, CA USA - Monday, May 07, 2001 at 16:10:13 (PDT)
Try this: hold your hands out in front of you, palms up, and curl your fingers so that they are in a hook shape. Put the 2 hooks together so that it's like you're shaking hands with yourself. Pull your arms outward, so that you are trying to pull apart your hooked hands. Hold for 30 seconds. Slide the hooks apart by moving your hands in the direction opposite of how you were pulling. Hold your hands, still in the hook shape, completely still for another 30 seconds. Now GENTLY try to uncurl you hands. I don't know why this works. I think that when you're pulling, you're kind of streaching the cartilege in your joints, then when you hold your hands still, the cartilege contracts and takes on the shape of your curled hand.
Charlie S. <mathomhouse@skybest.com>
USA - Saturday, May 05, 2001 at 20:54:19 (PDT)
Put one end of a (metal) slinky in your mouth, hold it with your teeth. Drop the other end to the ground. Listen to the Tie-Fighter Laser Blasters in your head.
Bobba Fett
USA - Thursday, May 03, 2001 at 01:32:45 (PDT)
When at a sleep over Have a friend cover you with a blanket with your arm and legs together close your eyes. Have the friend ask, 1.who do you like, 2.favorite color,&3.favortie car. then the friend should tell you this Your walking down a (question2's answer) beach when (question1's answer) comes up in a (question3's answer) and says hey come to my house for and experment. You say ok when you get there(question1's answer) says lay on this table you do and you go to sleep.Then your claped down.(friend should hold hands and feet down)Then (question1's answer) cut's open your head(friend should move his finger across your head) (question 1's answer) remove all you brians. Then (question1's answer)fills your head with sand deep dark sand. Then (question1's answer) cut's down your chest takes all your guts out and fills you body with deep dark sand. then you wake up (question1's answer) says getup we need this table for the experment.
Then you try to get up.
Have Fun :P
Travis <nuclear13@hotmail.com>
Kansas City, Ks USA - Wednesday, April 25, 2001 at 10:05:26 (PDT)
to torture a friend get some banaca and tellthem to put it under their tongue. after that have them close their mouth and hold all the banaca under their tongue, then take a deep breath in through their nose. the effect shoud be a severe stinging pain. to get rid of it rub salt in the affeted spot
matt <skatekorn2@aol.com>
sapulpa , ok USA - Saturday, April 21, 2001 at 22:15:01 (PDT)
More fun with resonance:
These I discovered in one of those above ground pools. You know the kind: chest high, plastic sheet lined, held together with a chest high band of corrugated metal around the edge. To my astonishment, I later found that the second trick works even in an Olympic competition size pool.
Trick one: start marching around through the water near the outer edge of the pool untill the entire mass of water is spinning at a slow walking pace. Then slowly spiral your march toward the center of the pool. You will have created a vortex of surprising magnitude that will leave a very low water level at the center and may spill much water at the outer edge.
Trick two: using a float, like a beach ball or paddle board near the
middle of the pool, slowly press down and release rhythmically. When you
find the resonant period of the pool, the water will begin to rise and
fall at the center as it falls and rises at the edge. What is remarkable
about these standing waves is the extreme magnitudes you can quickly
achieve. I have seen the water rising *several* *feet* into the air above
the edge of the pool. Try to find the higher overtones or harmonics, and
note the different standing wave shapes.
Caution: the dynamic loading (stresses) can't be within the expectations of the pool designers, especially at the first harmonic (or, fundamental frequency).
Ed Riggs <riggsed@usa.net>
Greensboro, NC USA - Wednesday, April 18, 2001 at 22:35:37 (PDT)
To annoy critters (and some people) when you've inconveniently forgotten your "silent" dog whistle: disassemble most any ballpoint pen. Blow through the outer barrel part so that a concentrated jet is directed out of the point of the barrel and across the open top of the ink refill tube. You may have to pry out a plastic stopper from the end of some models to get an "open top." The pitch of the whistle will depend mostly on the dimensions of the airspace above the ink, how hard you blow, and on the placement of the jet with respect to the tube. The resulting sound may seem like just a hiss of air or a piercing shreek of startling loudness.
Ed Riggs <riggsed@usa.net>
Greensboro, NC USA - Wednesday, April 18, 2001 at 22:00:25 (PDT)
A GREAT party trick-take an empty longneck beer bottle (Rolling Rock works great) and fill it up to about an inch from the top with water. Dry the bottle, and firmly hold it with one hand where the neck widens to the bottle. Hold the bottle over a trash can, etc, and forcefully slap your other palm over the mouth of the bottle. If you have used enough force, the bottom of the bottle will break out in a perfect circle. Be careful, TOO much force will shatter the bottle much higher up (when I first learned this trick, I demolished my dorm's recycling center in a fit of scientific awe!) When asked for an explanation, tell onlookers that you did it by "focusing your chi"!
Reverend Spike
USA - Wednesday, April 04, 2001 at 15:01:02 (PDT)
Made a Disgustoscope over the weekend, it turned out great, it's amazing what 3 mirrors can do. A really cool effect with it is to go to a dark room, light a match, and stick it into the bottom. Also if you have a small flashlight, cover the lens with your thumb, and put it up to the small opening. Anyone else have any effects they recommend with this?
R.H.
USA - Wednesday, March 28, 2001 at 16:40:45 (PST)
Balance a soda can at a 45 degree angle. Most soda cans have a rim on the bottom that allows you to balance the can at a precarious looking angle, the trick is you must have only about 1/3 or 1/4 of the liquid left in the can. You'll have to experiment to find the appropriate level for it to work, it's been a while since I have done it.
R.H.
USA - Sunday, March 25, 2001 at 15:47:36 (PST)
Take a piece of steel wool and touch it to the poles of a 9 volt battery.
W.H.
USA - Wednesday, March 21, 2001 at 17:17:41 (PST)
2 things:
1) Have a friend sit down. You sit behind them with your arms stretched out in front of you and the palms of your hands flat against their back. Now, take your hands away and rub your forearms. When you stretch your arms out again, they will have shortened - your palms will no longer reach your friends' back!!
3) This one is a good trick to play on someone you don't like. Wait until
they are fast asleep and put their hand in a bowl of luke-warm water.
They will soon pee themselves in thieir sleep!!!
Tania <moonstick@postmaster.co.uk>
UK - Monday, March 19, 2001 at 12:23:26 (PST)
To erase someone's face, you will need a hand mirror, a blackboard eraser, and a plain white wall (doesn't work well with wallpaper). Stand so that the wall is a couple feet to your right, your friend is a few feet directly in front of you, hold the hand mirror in your left hand, now place it front of your right eye at a 45 degree angle, so that your right eye can only see the wall to your right, and your left eye can see your friend. With the eraser in your right hand, move your hand toward the wall to the same height as your friend's head, you should be able to see your hand in the mirror, now move the eraser in small circles as if erasing something, you will now see your friend's face being erased! If you don't have an eraser handy, just use a tv remote, if you are alone, you can try it by looking into a wall mirror. Works best if the wall that you see in the mirror with your right eye is totally blank (no decorations).
R. H.
USA - Monday, March 19, 2001 at 09:57:52 (PST)
A Physical Trick: Put your left arm up in front of your face so that your wrist is between your two eyes. Focus your eyes on the wall in front of you. Point your right index finger towards your left wrist, at the level of your eyes, and slowly move it past your wrist (on the other side, not between your wrist and your eyes). To extend the trick further if you try it on a friend: try bending your finger once the knuckle goes past the near edge of the wrist but before the fingertip protrudes past the far edge; see if you can't make your whole hand diseappear into their arm.
Andrea Blumberg
North Bend, OR USA - Friday, March 16, 2001 at 19:32:40 (PST)
A Psychological trick: Try imagining that you are in a space ship with no gravity, and the "floor" is only an artificially gravitized "down." See if you can convince yourself that you're sticking out perpendicularly to a "wall." It might work better if you curl up in a ball with your back on the floor and imagine yourself to be stuck to the wall like a giant balloon that someone's rubbed against their head and pressed on the wall. If you can convince yourself of that, try this: while walking down the street imagine that you're staying utterly still, and your steps are actually turning the whole Earth towards you. You can get those distant trees to come over to you just by pointing your feet at them and pushing down on the Earth and pulling your foot back so that the Earth turns a tiny bit towards you.
Andrea Blumberg
North Bend , OR USA - Friday, March 16, 2001 at 19:23:39 (PST)
The nerves on the soft part of the bottom of your right and left foot are connected at the spine. Take off your shoes and socks and sit on your couch in front of a coffee table or any solid horizontal object you can press the arch of your bare foot against. With your right foot apply pressure to the soft part of the arch. Now rub forward and back and you will feel the arch of your left foot tingle and itch. Repeat using the left foot and you will feel it in the arch of the right. I do not believe this is a psychological effect but rather from when your spine forked in two while your legs were forming in the womb. It is most likely a form of crosstalk between the two primary nerves that were formed from one.
Stephen Firestone <s_firestone@yahoo.com>
Jackson, MS USA - Friday, March 02, 2001 at 13:41:50 (PST)
This one is great for demonstrating leverage. Place your index finger tips together and barely touch them together. Now have a friend put his/her arms straight out and grag your forearms and try to pull your fingertips apart. They can't do it regardless of their size or strength.
Jason Clendenin <junk@exciteFX.com>
Orlando, FL USA - Wednesday, February 28, 2001 at 16:33:20 (PST)
Alright, find a stobe light somewhere. Get a bunch of people together in a dark room (just kuz it is funner with more people). Turn the stobe light on, and start to clap your hands together at a steady rate. If try different speeds of clapping, you will eventually find the perfect speed that causes your hands to appear asthough they are not even moving. However, you can hear the sound of yourself clapping! Freakkie! Another thing you can do is to stick your arms out, bent at 90 degrees, and spin your fists around each other as fast as you can!, and to the other people it looks like you are spinning your hands really slow, but meanwhile, you are getting the workout of your life!. -I love this stie!-
Chris -MMvl- <mmvl_3k@hotmail.com>
USA - Saturday, February 17, 2001 at 20:59:36 (PST)
A sonic trick-- open your mouth fairly wide with your chin outthrust slightly. Blow the breath out gently- you should hear a rushing sound which can be turned into a strange sounding tone if you experiment with throat muscles,tongue position, air flow rate, and mouth and lip shapes. This could get really weird looking if you are with friends.
Keith Millard <drallim@icce.com>
Priest River, Id USA - Saturday, February 10, 2001 at 12:15:24 (PST)
Take an envelope [self sticking] into a dark room. Pull the strip off the back. See the sparks? Let me know why if you can. Cheers Royce
Royce Moncur <moncur@latrobe.net.au>
Willung South, Victoria Australia - Monday, February 05, 2001 at 04:50:16 (PST)
Use tape to secure 4 small sea shells to a cat's feet. It will hate the noise and feeling and seem to be able to keep all four feet off the floor at the same time. Once you're bored with that one stick a 6 inch length of tape along it's back. It will think it's crawling under something and walk round all day with it's stomach on the floor. If you want to be really cruel cut it's whiskers off (don't pluck them it hurts !) then watch it get it's head stuck in every hole that's just slightly too small.
Chris <GU1T4RMANAOL.COM>
MANCHESTER, UK - Tuesday, January 30, 2001 at 15:03:05 (PST)
Create your own 'Otherspace' bubble and totally wierd-out your neighbourhood! Take one of those cheap Radio-Shack radio microphones and place it in a bush at ground level in your front yard, right next to the sidewalk. Now, go into a front-facing room of your house with a stereo in it and tune the FM radio to receive your signal. Now, open the windows and turn up the volume until you get a howl of feedback - then back it off a little until it stops. Now, go outside and walk along the street - it sounds like your little bit of street has turned into a huge cave! Go back inside and watch people walking back and forth trying to figure out what's going on!
Simon <cubensisClara.net, stillsonAkrisalis.co.uk>
UK - Monday, January 29, 2001 at 06:00:00 (PST)
Be shorter OR TALLER. You'll need another person who is a different height than yourself for this one. You'll also need a tall fence or a post beside an open area. Both of you should stand in a line with the tallest person standing beside the post and the shortest standing farthest from the post, and therefore nearest the open area. So you have "open area" - short person - tallest person - "post". Stand sideways so you are not looking at each other but are facing the same direction. Turn your heads and look at each other. Now switch places. You should perceive each other as being a different height than when you were lined up in the other order.
Steven Dufresne <stevend@entrenet.com>
Vanier, ON Canada - Sunday, January 28, 2001 at 18:25:02 (PST)
HEY....I did this years ago with two friends...... GET A SMALL HAND CRANK GENERATOR....LIKE THE ONES FROM OLD TELEPHONES...OR MAY BE AVAILABLE FROM SCIENCE SUPPLY HOUSES.....ONE PERSON (OF 2) GRABS A WIRE CONNECTED TO ONE OUTPUT LEAD....PERSON # 2 GRABS THE OTHER LEAD.THEN THEY EACH GRAB ONTO ONE EARLOBE OF PERSON #3 WITH THE FREE HAND...GRAB TITE NOW ! AS THE GENERATOR IS CRANKED , LIGHT FLASHES WILL APPEAR IN THE VISION OF THE MIDDLE (#3) PERSON.THE RATE CHANGES AS THE CRANKING INCREASES.........AND THE CURRENT IS GOING THROUGH THE CENTER PERSONS BRAIN. CAREFUL....DON'T TRY THIS ALONE....YOU CAN GET A REAL GOOD SHOCK AND IT FEELS LIKE YOUR SWALLOWING YOUR TONGUE....! EXPERIMENT....CLOSE YOUR EYES , OPEN THEM , FLICKER THEM RAPIDLY....KEWL !!!
{}===The Blacksmith==={}
N.Y. USA - Friday, January 26, 2001 at 14:07:21 (PST)
Try this one! Go into a room with an open are so you wont hit anything. A room with carpet works the best. Now stand in the middle of the room and stare at the ground while you start to spin around in circles. Pretty soon it will seem like you are on airspinning very fast!
Alex <haunter21@hotmail.com>
mundelein, IL USA - Thursday, January 25, 2001 at 18:57:02 (PST)
Take your ring finger, and point it to the ground, and sway it back and forth. In some people, it will rock like a pendulum. If you slap someone with this effect, it will feel like a whip! It's that kind of pain that lingers for minutes! Pretty sadistic, but okay when its just one of those days when you just need to smack someone. Doesn't work in some, and usually only works in your writing hand (don't know why).
Trevor <dualblade1@aol.com>
Los Angeles, CA USA - Sunday, January 07, 2001 at 23:24:11 (PST)
Sometimes when I concentrate really hard with my eyes, I mean really stress the muscles in your eyes, like you would flex your biceps, and my eyes are able to shake rapidly. It looks scary to other people. I was able to teach few people to do this. It seems some can do it and others can't.
Trevor <dualblade1@aol.com>
Los Angeles, CA USA - Sunday, January 07, 2001 at 23:19:59 (PST)
Flying tube. Take the ends out of a ball-point pen that has a uniform, hollow center shaft (I use a Bic round stic). Place it on a hard surface edge, like a table, and press down on it hard with your two index fingers spaced evenly on the tube until it pops out away from you. It will fly up and away from you before falling to the ground. How it works: the backspin produced by the pressure from your fingers pushing down pushes air under the tube as it flies forward. The air "bunches up" under the tube and it pushes the tube up. Is there a future for this in air travel? ;-)
Daniel Shackelford <daniel@shackelford.org>
Whittier, CA USA - Tuesday, January 02, 2001 at 23:04:00 (PST)
THE OVEN RACK: Take an oven rack and a pair of shoe laces. Tie one shoe lace to eac of two ajacent corners of the oven rack. Wrap one shoe lace around each index finger, with the rack hanging freely. Lean over. Put your fingers in your ears as you would to block out noise. Have someone sweep a spoon or bottle across the rack, hitting each bar. Try this with a group of friends. Have THEM try it with another group. NEVER tell anyone what will happen before they try it. (my email on my previous submission was wrong).
Ralph Hartley <ralph@sprucemt.com>
Rockville, MD USA - Friday, November 03, 2000 at 06:55:49 (PST)
LOOK AT THE VEINS ON YOUR RETINA
Find a window that looks out into bright sunshine, but that the sun dosn't shine directly into. Shield your eyes from the light so that your pupils expand. Punch a pin hole in a piece of thick paper or alumunum foil. Look with one eye throug the hole out into the sunshine with the hole near your eye. Move the hole arround. You will see shadows of the blood vessels inside your eye.
Ralph Hartley <hartley@sprucemt.com>
Rockville, MD USA - Friday, November 03, 2000 at 06:42:19 (PST)
******ADULT SUPERVISION REQUIRED*******
Put a "Peep" (or any other marshmallowy creature) in the microwave for 15-20 seconds. It will get really big--about 10 times it's original volume. A regular marshmallow works just as well, but isn't as much fun.... And keep your finger on the STOP button the first time, until you see how YOUR oven reacts.
Link <link25@excite.com>
Amelia Island, FL USA - Thursday, November 02, 2000 at 09:53:25 (PST)
Put a small piece of clear tape on an inflated balloon. Stick a pin through the tape and balloon. It won't pop. If you put tape on opposite sides, you can stick a long hatpin clear through the balloon without popping it. (Air will leak out slowly a round the pin, so the balloon will deflate in a matter of minutes.)
Link <link25@excite.com>
Amelia Island, FL USA - Thursday, November 02, 2000 at 09:30:28 (PST)
Take your hands and rotate them one around the other. Almost universally people i know rotate them the same way through space. Either both hands will rotate coming up and toward you or Down and away form you. Both arte traveling in the same direction just alternating the time they pass through teh same space. The challenge, Rotate one hand one way the opposing hand the other. (Your right hand travels down and away while your left travels up and toward.) With practice i was able to do this, the one i was never able to accomplish was taking one hand and rotating it in a circle in front of you (like washing a window) and with the other hand drawing a cross/square (any sharply angled geometric shape will do) at the same time. I consider these steps two and three to someone stating "Pat your head and rub your tummy at the same time."
H. Lewis <peregrine911@netscape.net>
juneau, ak USA - Saturday, October 28, 2000 at 02:59:07 (PDT)
OK you'll need 2 friends to help you with this one. Now you lay down on the floor/ground, face down, and have your friends lift up your arms and legs high, while your body still lays on the ground. let your head just hang loose. This should be rather uncomfortable, but hang in there. Have your friends hold your arms and legs up for about a minute, then have them lower them, SLOWLY, to the ground. It will feel like your arms and legs just were lowered to a point lower than your body, as if they went thr ough the ground! Now rotate so your friends can experience this amazing sensation too!
Kyle <kimo_sefu@hotmail.com>
WI USA - Saturday, October 07, 2000 at 13:04:04 (PDT)
Okay, wear eye protection and old clothes 'cuz this one is a little dangerous. Maybe best outdoors. Get a couple of people, and the following: Some replacement lighter flints Ronson etc. (getting harder to find), the spring from a ballpoint pen, and a cigarette lighter or other flame source. Wedge the flint into the spring so you can hold it in the flame without getting burnt. Hold it there until it starts to glow a little. Remove it and instantly flick it with your forefinger AWAY FROM PEOPLE. It will make a shower of sparks as the whole flint combines with oxygen. Impressive & mysterious.
Jim
Rockaway, NJ USA - Tuesday, September 05, 2000 at 11:13:35 (PDT)
----- ------*MAKE ICE BURN*----- ------ To make ice burn, simply freeze sugar-water, then douse with cigarette ash.
Evan Elrod <GokuElrod@HoTMaiL.com>
Salem, OH USA - Tuesday, August 29, 2000 at 00:08:04 (PDT)
Make people believe that you can stop TIME ITSELF... it's easier than you'd imagine. First, get a strobe light with a frequency control (most of them have these). Second, go into a room that has a ceiling fan... Turn all the lights off and make sure the room is totally dark. Then turn the strobe on, lay down, and watch the fan (best if you point the strobe right at the fan). Slowly turn the control dial on the strobe light, and with almost no practice, you can make the fan blades *appear* to slow down, stop, or even go into reverse! Amazing!
Reverend Doktor Pope Illumnus Froon <illumnus@iggle.com>
USA - Monday, July 31, 2000 at 08:19:02 (PDT)
body tricks to play on yourself: close your eyes and do the dead man's float on the water. if you do it long enough achieve bodily bliss. lay on your back with eyes closed staring up on a sunny day. when you open your eyes as well as feeling a little disoriented colors may look desaturated, almost sepia tone, and unreal.
Ria <froggy@bitchgoddess.com>
Cambridge, MA USA - Friday, July 21, 2000 at 01:40:10 (PDT)
someone may have mentioned one/both of these before... oh well... I used to experiment with a dog's mind by saying "good dog" in a 'disaproving' voice, "bad dog" in a happy voice and alternating praise with blame within a few seconds, changing tone and/or words in mid-sentence, etc. eventually she took it all as a fun game.
Ria <froggy@bitchgoddess.com>
Cambridge, MA USA - Friday, July 21, 2000 at 01:36:13 (PDT)
This is aneat trick I learned years ago. You can do this at home, in a restaurant or anywhere you like(even if you don't like the place you're at). You will need a metal fork and spoon, a round double pointy toothpick a glass glass{not plastic or paper), and a match. Interlock the business end of the spoon into the business end of the fork. Then take the toothpick and placeit in the tine of the fork so it balances the fork and spoon cobo on the rim of the glass ( you will have to move it to and fro and side to side slightly but you get it ) When the toothpick is balanced, light the end that hangs over the inside of the glass and let it burn to the rim. Carefully knock what burned piece is left and then look for astonished faces as you bask in your new-found adulation.
Mike Hathaway <mhathaway@tacomaclick.net>
Tacoma, Wa USA - Monday, July 17, 2000 at 00:47:58 (PDT)
Anti-glare filters for PC screens are great diffraction gratings. Mount one in front of your face (or manufacture glasses to your personal 'spec', with the lenses being replaced by the diffraction grating). Where to look? Well, light sources are particularly illuminating ... cadmium light, and many of the industrial strength floodlights all have interesting emission spectra and diffraction patterns. I do know another one, but it involves 2 sub-critical masses of Plutonium and is not reccomended for beginners.
Heronymous Toadstool <Jellyclock@excite.com>
Ipswich, UK - Wednesday, July 12, 2000 at 05:16:05 (PDT)
Find a reasonably smallish sized room with little furniture , somewhere you can afford to be less concerned with the surface of the walls and floors afterwards. ( sounds cool already doesn't it ? ) When it's dark take a cyalume stick , one of those break and shake chemiluminescent light sticks, and just follow the instructions . While the thing is glowing away happily, make a tiny pinprick of a hole in the end of the lightstick. Now go crazy spraying tiny drops of glowing solution around the room. You should have every surface of the room now coated in what looks like a deep space star field . Notice how your inner ear and eyes struggle to make sense of the lack of bearings, as you now have no depth of field or parallax to relate to. The use of perception altering drugs and experimental ambient electronic music under such conditions may or may not have been used by the author with great delight!
Mark <semtex@netspace.net .au>
Australia - Wednesday, July 12, 2000 at 03:57:25 (PDT)
I haven't seen what is to me the greatest trick of all. Have someone sit across the table from you with their hands underneath the table. Stoke their hand with your finger with one hand while duplicating the same motion with the other hand on the table directly above their hand. After a while they'll begin to feel as though the table was their hand. You can touch anywhere on the table and they will sense it. You motion have to match exactly though, and complicated unpredictable movements work best. Your vision plays a part in determining how you perceive your body, a principal which has been used to eliminate phantom pain in amputated limbs.
Matt Miller <matmillr@ix.netcom.com>
Sacramento, Ca USA - Tuesday, July 11, 2000 at 20:56:28 (PDT)
A fun food trick, get yourself a clear carbonated beverage .. like 7up or Sprite, a clear glass, and a handful of chocolate chips. Fill the glass with the liquid and toss in the chocolate chips. Wait a few moments and the chips will begin to float to the surface, then drop again to the bottom, creating a constant cycle of chips falling and rising. It should run for between 15-30 minutes before the chips will stop returning to the surface. HOW IT WORKS: The chips should initially sink to the bottom of the glass .. but slowly the carbon dioxide in the liquid will cling to the chips, making them bouyant and thus bringing them up to the surface. Once they break the surface, they shed their CO2 to the atmosphere, become less bouyant, and sink to the bottom to pick up more CO2 .. and thus continuing the cycle until the amount of CO2 in the liquid can no longer produce the effect. We had fun with this one while in college dining halls. Enjoy!
Lion Templin <lion@leonine.com>
Minneapolis, MN USA - Tuesday, July 11, 2000 at 01:42:30 (PDT)
a fun two-person trick: open your mouth wide, then have someone else put their mouth completely over and around your nose and blow (not too hard, or you'll get a nosebleed!). if their lips have a good seal around your nose, your mouth will emit an entertaining honking sound.
steveoh <vecna_99@yahoo.com>
Cambridge, MA USA - Wednesday, July 05, 2000 at 09:29:03 (PDT)
here's an intertaning one: What to do with those pesky A - O - SMELL disks that they keep sending you. HERE'S AN IDEA! whelp if you can make it to the kitchen with out violently mutilating them via pure hatred and frustration with one of the world most annoying isp's. STICK IT IN THE MICROWAVE! whoowhooo. it has an effect comparable to what r2d2 looked like when he accidentally hooked up to a power main instead of a data interface on one of the computers in the death start.
Tristan <hidro@nojavanetspam.com>
USA - Sunday, July 02, 2000 at 19:44:00 (PDT)
Lie on your back, on the bottom of a swimming pool (with a face mask on)- with practice you can blow AMAZING bubble-rings, which get bigger until they break up or, if they are really good, reach the surface. I've only managed a few times, but have seen a dive instructor do this really well. (They are like smoke rings, but look silvery underwater).
Gavin Griffith-Jones <gavin_gj@hotmail.com>
Sydney, NSW Australia - Tuesday, June 27, 2000 at 00:44:50 (PDT)
The next time you're in front of a waterfall (a rushing one, not a little one), stare straight ahead into it without blinking for 30 - 40 seconds and then move your eyes to the rocks right next to the fall. Watch the rocks grow!
Valerie <valndan@gotnet.net>
CA USA - Sunday, June 25, 2000 at 12:03:16 (PDT)
Something kind of like this has already been submitted, but one thing to do when you can't get narcotics :-) 1. Lie on a bed and take a really deep breath. Maybe put on some Moody Blues music.
2. Grab your nose. Tight.
3. Blow your nose really hard, still holding it. After a few moments of this your sight should start to fade.
4. When things look pretty dim, let go. Lean back.
You should experience a few moments of unconsciousness, then a bit of disorientation, then a weird taste in your mouth and funny heavy/floating feelings. When you open your eyes (they'll be closed), don't be surprised if you're in a rather uncomfortable position! Like leaning against your CD player, for example. The first time I did this (without knowing what it did; I was just trying to pop my stuffed ears), I forgot where I was (in my room) and what I'd come there for. I didn't link the events, and the second time, I fell right off the bed and hit my head on the wall. That time I didn't wake up till my dad came in to see what was wrong. I almost told him I was trying to take a nap! I really thought I had just been sleeping. Anyway, this trick is a good way to zone out of boring trips, get to sleep at night, etc. Just be careful, because I don't really know what could happen to you while you're out.
Sytel
Cranbrook, Canada - Friday, June 23, 2000 at 13:26:10 (PDT)
Driving home from work one night I observed a flashing aircraft warning beacon atop a cell phone tower several miles away. Boredom got the best of me and I began "THE COUNTING GAME" as I call it. So here I am, driving down the interstate at 12AM concentrating on this far away flashing light and it happened- I blinked my eyes and simultaneously shifted my point of focus one way or the other a miniscule amount and the one flashing light suddenly exploded into a shower of lights across the night sky! Too cool!! You can`t move your whole head, just your eyes, and the blink has to be perfectly timed with the flash cycle of the light.If you move your eyes horizontally at the flash, the streamer will appear horizontal, and vert. movement will produce vert. streamers ! TRY IT- But you might want someone else to drive. What is going on here? S. Lee sandyl@camden.net
Sandy Lee <sandyl@camden.net>
Camden, SC USA - Sunday, June 18, 2000 at 00:42:28 (PDT)
We did this when we were 10 years old, I don't know if it might be dangerous ... Inhale and exhale very forcefully for as long as you can stand the exercise. Then exhale as forcefully as you can while blocking your mouth with your palm or you under-arm, so no air escapes. Build up as much internal pressure as you can. You should get very, very dizzy. I remember waking up on the floor of the classroom, so disoriented that I really believed I had just woken up from sleep. In reality I must have fainted for a moment and toppled on the floor. No permanent harm was done, but I was startled by the effect. Don't know why this works ... Another experiment: put carbonated water in the drinking-bowl of your cat (I believe you call that soda-pop). One cat jumped one meter in the air after taking a sip - the other cat became extremely suspicious and tried to touch the water with his paw.
Petr Kazil <kazil@euronet.nl>
Rotterdam, Holland - Thursday, June 15, 2000 at 11:32:02 (PDT)
hey, next time you get a cut or a bruis or hit your funny bone, or do anything that hurts, try this. get a hammer. and start hitting yourself with it really hard. the effect is felt best when you a hit a finger or two or anywhere really sensitive. Now compare the first pain to this new pain. doesn't seem so bad does it?
torment
USA - Friday, June 02, 2000 at 09:46:08 (PDT)
My previous post was about inflicting ice cream headaches on your friends. I'm not really a sadist but here is another way to cause your unsuspecting friends to inflict pain on themselves. This can provide you with juvenille amusement. Use some creative persuation to get your friends to bite down on their own pinky fingertips in such a manner that their two front teeth are pushing down on the fingernails and the lower front teeth are pushing up. Demonstrating the proper bite usually works well - they will trust you if they see you appearingy to be following your own instructions. Dare then to bite as hard as they can. (Most people will not bite off their fingertips!). While biting can hurt, the real shot of pain comes when you convince them to stop biting and quickly hook their two pinky fingers together and pull as hard as the can! They will experience a sharp blast of pain similar to a strong electric shock. Try it now yourself! It will only hurt for a minute or so. Go ahead - I dare!
Ross Macintosh <ross@designstop.com>
Halifax, NS Canada - Friday, May 26, 2000 at 17:55:29 (PDT)
Next time you are eating ice cream with a friend (or better yet an enemy) suggest to them in as innocent a manner as you can that they try putting some ice cream under their tongue. They will immediatly experience an extreme "ice cream headache" that you will get to enjoy as a sadistic observer! It is my belief that most of us learned as very young children the proper method to eat ice cream without getting the headache. Interestingly, very few people seem to know the source of those dreaded headaches is getting it under your tongue. Their ignorance empowers you to cause them great pain! If you are really devious you could create a situation where you get several (or hundreds of) friends all eating ice cream at the same time and trick them all in one shot. Boy, would that be funny!
Ross Macintosh <ross@designstop.com>
Halifax, NS Canada - Friday, May 26, 2000 at 17:32:56 (PDT)
As young teens my friends and I had great fun building and using "light cannons". What you do is get a cardboard tube about two inches in diameter and 24 to 36 inches long. Put inside the tube some acetate sheeting (available at artist supply stores) so that it lines the inner wall of the tube. The acetate can end up a few layers thick - this is a good thing. Next get a camera flash unit and duct tape it to one end of the acetate-lined tube. You might need to cut the end of the tube so that it fits well to the flash unit. Tape it so all the "flash" is directed down the tube. It is also important not to tape over the flash's "test" button because it will be the light cannon's trigger. If you try this you will be very impressed with the acetate-lined tube's ability to concentrate the camera flash's light. The light can be "shot" onto a surface 100 feet away with a beam diameter at the target of less than a foot diameter. It is great "fun" to shoot your friends (classmates or coworkers) from a distance! The experience of being blasted from 100 feet+ is much like having a camera flashed from just a few feet in front of your face. Note that it has been twenty years since I last played with light cannons and my eyesight has continued to deteriorate ever since! PS: These cannons would be great fun to play with outdoors on a foggy night! Also please refrain from shooting anyone at close range as the light flash can be very intense and probably damaging.
Ross Macintosh <ross@designstop.com>
Halifax, NS Canada - Friday, May 26, 2000 at 17:03:29 (PDT)
[deleted, a bit too dangerous for kids] Ross Macintosh <ross@designstop.com>
Halifax, NS Canada - Friday, May 26, 2000 at 16:30:44 (PDT)
Take a piece of aluminium foil about the size of an index card. Make a pinhole in the center of the foil. Look through the pinhole at a well-illuminated plain white surface. Now move the aluminum foil back and forth just a little bit (you should still be able to see through the pinhole at all times). As you move the aluminum foil, you should notice the appearance of fine-branched lines that appear to be on the white surface. These fine-branched lines are the blood vessels of your retina.
Bruce O'Gara <bogara@barnard.edu>
New York, NY USA - Wednesday, April 26, 2000 at 16:34:11 (PDT)
Get a video camera with a video-out jack somewhere. (RCA, S-Video, whatever). Connect the camera to a TV with the cord that you need (varies. usually just an RCA cable). Turn the TV on so that it displays whats coming from the video-in jack, and turn the camera on so it shows what it sees on the TV. Now, point the camera directly at the TV so its perpendicular to the screen. You should see a very strange pattern in the screen. Try doing it at night when you're about to fall asleep. It messes with your mind better =)
Erik <newlevel99@yahoo.com>
MI USA - Saturday, April 08, 2000 at 23:20:15 (PDT)
Take an egg. Just an ordinary egg. Now take a cup of Black Vinegar (white works, but not as well as black) and toss the egg in there for a while. Overnight works for me. Then, take the egg out. What's this? A perfectly normal UNBOILED egg that's soft, rubbery, and (being gentle) will bounce, squish and squash, all without that pesky hard shell it used to have. Try cracking that one! (Warning: May smell of vinegar)
tim <frumbert@hotmail.com>
tamworth, nsw austalia - Friday, April 07, 2000 at 04:49:06 (PDT)
stick a pin perpendicularly in a side of a pencil. Tap the pin on the 90 degree edge of a table while holding the pencil - you will hear drip noises of different frequencies as the pin vibrates. Annoy your classmates or coworkers.
Mak <rand3289@yahoo.com>
NY USA - Monday, April 03, 2000 at 10:40:17 (PDT)
Supervised children only! Carefully put small pieces of dry ice in balloons and tie them. Drop them in a mail slot or slide them under a locked door. Watch the person wonder how a fully inflated balloon got in the room. Put them in the suggestion boxes in stores. If you work in a store, put them in the drop safe.
Phil S <pscovis@academic.com>
Mtn View, CA USA - Thursday, March 23, 2000 at 13:49:30 (PST)
Drip sound
Similar to throat tapping below strech your neck and hold your chin forward so that your throat is under tension. Hold your moth in a "O". Now the hard part tap you cheek with your finger and simataniously close yor mouth quickly while keeping thor mouth shaped in a "O". If done correctly this produces a DRRRIIIPP sound that sounds exactly like water dripping. This may take some pratice but is worth it.
Herbert Miller <midnighton@megsinet.net>
USA - Thursday, March 16, 2000 at 21:51:35 (PST)
While Sitting in a darkened room, use an empty wine bottle,try a green or colored one.Take a Bic lighter and turn it upside down while releasing the gas into the bottle opening, oh,...maybe 6 seconds or so, expieriment,then just quickly light the opening of the bottle with the lighter touching the glass,and move the hand out of the way. You should have a nice looking ring of plasma getting smaller and smaller as it follows the shape of the bottle on its way up and out.It will also sing to you as it takes on some really nice colors.Its all about expierimenting.
Robert Kelly <famousstrangers@aol.com>
Wyomissing, PAWhile USA - Sunday, March 12, 2000 at 02:50:57 (PST)
THE DISAPPEARING FLOOR
lay down on the floor on your stomach with your handsout in front of you and hold them stiff. Now have a friend pull you upward by your shoulders arching your back untill it starts to hurt, wait ten seconds then shut your eyes and have them lower you slowly AHHHHHHHH!!!!! im in the basement!
mark
USA - Thursday, March 09, 2000 at 13:54:55 (PST)
Try this, flip your toung over so the left side is on the right. now bite down on it so your toung does not flip back to its original position. Now touch the right side of your toung. The nerves in your toung are so use to being in the same position that it actually feels like your touching the other side!
mark
USA - Thursday, March 09, 2000 at 13:44:56 (PST)
Sometimes on TV, faces or bodyparts are censored, not with a black rectangle, but with a "mozaic squares" effect.(like a very low-resolution image) Now try this: Defocus your eyeview so that you see a blurred image.I suppose that most people can do this, unless I am one of the few. After some practise you should be able to control this effect (more or less blurring). When you do this on those censored images, you will see that the shape of the "forbidden" image is much easier to recognize... How interesting!
Other funny thing to do: open your mouth and stretch your neck a bit
upward and you chin forward, so that your throat skin is under tension.
Now tap your throat with your middle finger(s),like you would throw a
cigarette(or bogus, hmmm?)away.This produces
a Xylophone type of sound from the mouth. When changing your mouth and lips, the sound effect varies. You could call this instrument a throat-o-phone. When will we have the first throat-orcherstra?
Chris Janssens
Brussels, Belgium - Wednesday, March 08, 2000 at 04:32:04 (PST)
I have something to add to that"static fun"--Rub a balloon on your hair and then stick it to a cat--it stays on them and they run and it's really funny! You can only do it once though. They learn very fast!(I have five cats so I got to do it more than once)
Iva
Minneapolis, MN USA - Monday, March 06, 2000 at 18:14:54 (PST)
Sitting in a car waiting for a friend I closed my eyes to nap but was unable to sleep. It was raining and after several minuets my hearing improved dramatically. The rain sounded louder and people walking by could be clearly heard. I was experience what blind people normally experience. Their brain compensates for the loss of sight this takes about 15 minuets (it was a long wait). when I opened my eyes my hearing returned to normal in less than a minute.
Herbert Miller <Midnighton@megsinet.net>
Chicago, Il USA - Monday, March 06, 2000 at 11:00:07 (PST)
Shine a light in your eye or stare at sunlight that's reflected off something to get one of those spots in front of your vision. Now start to blink rapidly as the spot fades. Keep your eyes fixed on one spot and the glowing spot will move as it fades ! Move your eye and it jumps back to it's original position. Sometimes the spot will change colors as it fades this works, well with the reflected sunlight. Do not look at the SUN Also pick a common word you don't use every day like vinegar and say it to your self about 100 times. think all about the word and picture it in your mind. The word will loose all meaning and seem to be in a foreign language. This could be related to the effect you get when you sniff a strong smell like a perfume bottle for a minute and the smell begins to fade but you can still smell something like a onion.
Herbert Miller <midnighton@megsinet.net>
Chicago, Il USA - Monday, March 06, 2000 at 10:40:20 (PST)
Ooo! Oooo! Inspired by the airline-noises orchestra below: rig up a certain location with computer-driven noisemakers, so the "orchestra" can screw with people's minds by playing its "music" automatically at random times unannounced. For example, in an outdoor bus-stop city environment hide multiple noisemakers such as a truck's backup-alarm, muffled (distant-sounding) car horns, pagers and cellphones, etc. Maybe cheat a little by adding small loudspeakers with bird-chirps and sidewalk/footstep noises. Then have the whole thing play an obvious percussion sequence every few hours. It will be as if the normal environmental sounds are conspiring to make music.
Bill Beaty
Seattle, WA USA - Tuesday, February 29, 2000 at 10:04:19 (PST)
One more:
Y'know those commercials where, on an airplane, someone starts beeping the flight attendant button, then someone else joins in and starts clicking their seatbelt, and so on until there's a full orchestra of sounds? Or the ones where a person on a bus sta rts singing, then another joins in and then another, while everyone else is wondering what's happening?
Well...How about getting a real choir or orchestra together, dressing them all in street clothes, and putting them all in various places on a plane, bus, or train. Then at some point in travel, have one start singing or making noise. And then another. And so on until the whole choir is making a song.
I'd love to see the faces of those unsuspecting!
Ryan weh
USA - Saturday, February 26, 2000 at 01:17:56 (PST)
Got a pretty good one:
Obtain a small table mirror, somewhere around four inches to a foot wide.
Hold the mirror, facing up, right under or in front of your nose. So it's touching your nose and you can see the ceiling. Now, stand up. Oh, just do it! And then start walking.
If you keep looking at the ceiling in the mirror, the effect is neat--it feels like you're walking on the ceiling! Don't kick that hanging lamp...
ryan weh <urthskape@flashmail.com>
woodinville, WA USA - Saturday, February 26, 2000 at 01:07:24 (PST)
This one is kind of mean, get two flashlights and a sleeping person (a little brother worked the best for me). Make sure the person is dead asleep. Hold a flashlight in each hand, then sneak up on them, turn both flashlights on really fast and yell " WATCH OUT YOU ARE GOING TO GET HIT BY A TRUCK!!" Turn the flashlights off and the results are really funny! My little brother used to tremble in his sleep but never wake up.
Becca
USA - Wednesday, February 23, 2000 at 20:17:29 (PST)
Thanks for this fun. As one of the oldest children here, I have three things to say. 1)You naughty children, watch those eye games! There's such a thing as yoga for the eyes - don't stare blankly. Take it from somebody who's really myopic. Myopia is supposed to be "an inherited idiosyncratic tendency" according to Aldous Huxley. You need to properly exercise your eyes. Let us say you are sewing. You should follow the point of the needle with your eyes, not stare at the work as a whole. 2)An answer to the egg in a milk bottle trick is to soak the egg in vinegar until it becomes rubber: flexible and bouncy. 2)My favorite human trick is for two people (yes, it's science) and I made it up myself. One person must hold his or her mouth open like the top of a bottle (taut, flat) and the other person blows across it like a bottle. It works best if you don't laugh. And no whistling.
Linda
USA - Sunday, February 20, 2000 at 20:01:04 (PST)
2 tricks: one, waggle your finger in front of your monitor. you can "see" the refresh rate. the same thing happens in front of a fluorescent light. second trick: when you sneeze, hold your nose and look at a LED readout like an alarm clock. it will wiggle, i guess because your eyeballs start to shake. on second thought, don't do that.
Al White
St. Louis, mo USA - Thursday, February 17, 2000 at 14:34:16 (PST)
I forgot one very important detail in the "falling through the floor" trick mentioned in my later entree. The "victim" should close their eyes throughout the whole experience. This makes the sensation of falling much more realistic.
Dave
USA - Thursday, February 17, 2000 at 09:31:05 (PST)
I had no idea there were so many other childlike minds out there! Maybe the planet has a chance after all.
- On a sunny, lazy, weekend morning, remember not to open your eyes when you wake up. Then blink your eyes open quickly to take retinal "snapshots" of the room, or your partner sleeping next to you, or your cat waiting to be fed... patiently of course. You'll be startled how long the images persist.
- If you wear glasses, and have chosen a high-index plastic lens (like polycarbonate), congratulations. You are wearing the world's most portable spectroscope: a prism. Find a row of differently colored text, and look at it normally. A combination including red and blue works best. Now tilt your head to look through the top or bottom of your lens instead of the center. If your glasses were fit properly, the text should start out looking like one row, and end up looking dispersed across as many rows as there are colors. (The stronger your prescription, the more pronounced this effect.) If you use this effect on light sources at night, you can begin to distinguish lamp types: some have strong red and blue lines, some smear out into complete rainbows, and some don't smear at all!
- Urban dwellers: while stuck in an office building or other large structure, fantasize that you're actually inside a spaceship or spacestation, surrounded by hard vaccum. After some practice, extend the fantasy to include your home, and even the outdoor : now it's a space station, orbital arcology, et cetera. Finally, extend the fantasy to include the entire planet... (everybody on the planet needs to do this exercise).
- Drive to a scenic spot on top of a tall hill or mountain or cliff, and take in the view. Now, drive a mile or so downhill, walk back uphill to the same spot, and take a second look. Impressive, eh?
- A 9-volt battery tastes different depending on which part of your tongue you discharge it.
- Open the kitchen cold water tap to a trickle, and let it pour onto the flattest part of the porcelain sink. Make sure the sink is well lit. Flourescent lights are desireable, but not necessary. Close the valve again until you get the tiniest laminar (smooth) flow that doesn't break up into a stream of drops. Are there any standing waves in the stream yet? Very gradually, increase the flow... watch how the waves change. Now do the same thing with hot water. Do you notice any differences? Also notice the smooth area in the layer of water on the porcelain, and how the boundary between it and the rest of the water in the sink is stable.
Rick Cross <bughunter@earthlink.dontspam.net>
Pasadena, CA USA - Wednesday, February 16, 2000 at 14:37:45 (PST)
Counting games: Start counting in a regular pattern inside your head. Can you do it while reading this text? Can you phrase sentences of your own while counting--that is, one mental "voice" saying "one, two, three" while another one says "Why yes, this is easy, I do this all the time?" How many mental "voices" do you have? Can you count and mentally recite the alphabet at the same time? Can you recite the alphabet and think of something else at the same time? Can you do either while speaking aloud? Do you do them at the same speed? Does the speed change if you increase your heart rate? Does the speed change for anything at all?
Mary Messall
USA - Wednesday, February 16, 2000 at 14:30:05 (PST)
Get a bunch of playdough, or sillyputty, and play with it...
Blow bubbles with your spit. Works better if you hack up some slime and mix it with your spit =)
Massage your saliva glands. They're on your neck, just above your adams apple (if you're a guy). Wait untill your mouth is totally filled with spittle. Walk around, try to talk, swallow, spit (continuously).
this one is best if you're alone (to avoid the stares). Scratch yourself anywhere, you'll start to itch, keep scratching all over your body (carefull, don't scrape off the skin!) After a while your whole body will start to itch like crazy. Now try to stop scratching... ooooooh!
and now for the best one: You need at least two people, more works but can be akward. Now try and steal each other's socks, while you're wearing them.
Chrissy
- Wednesday, February 16, 2000 at 11:21:31 (PST)
I've not seen this one mentiond yet: Close one eye and with one finger push on the open eye or it's eyelid until your vision shifts slightly (you're holding your eyeball still). Don't look at anything, just hold the eyeball and keep your head still. Soon your vision will fade away, but anything moving in the room will remain visible. This is caused by a persistance effect: your brain ignores any signal which doesn't change after a certain amount of time.
Mr. Van <42n8@disinfo.net>
Kansas City, KS USA - Tuesday, February 15, 2000 at 20:20:26 (PST)
If someone gets hurt doing these, you are probably doing them right. Tell a friend to lie on the floor face down with their arms stretched straight out past their head. Now grab hold of their wrists and pull their upper body up as far off the ground as possible without them crying out in pain, and hold them there for as long as possible without them crying out in pain, at least a couple of minutes. Now very slowly lower them back down onto the ground until their arms are once again lying straight out past their head. They will feel like they are being lowered down farther than they came up, actually falling right through the floor!
Get in an elevator, wait until it is just about to go up, then jump as high as you can. As the elevator accelerates, you will slam back down into the floor as if you had fallen from much higher than you jumped. Then just before the elevator is about to stop at some higher floor, jump again. You will fly up into the air and hit your head on the roof! This may take some practice to get the timing down.
I haven't been able to simply hold my breath until I passed out, but you can pass out by holding your breath and swimming under water, probably because the vigorous exercise depletes your oxygen reserves much faster. Swim back and forth along the bottom of a pool until you feel you have to surface. Then start swimming really hard, and tense up your upper body against the urge to exhale. After a point, not breathing will actually become easier with time. Then the world will start to sink into black pits, and you will pass out. It might save on life insurance if you have a friend with you when you try this, or better yet, an attractive lifeguard who knows mouth-to-mouth resusitation.
This one is really for the hard-core weirdo only: Any member of the polar bear club will tell you jumping into freezing water is a rush. Trying jumping into a lake in January, and your whole body will contract involuntarilly. It's kind of like sex, except of course that it causes agonizing pain. No really, it's kind of similar in that it causes an involuntary spasm, like an orgasm. Don't try this if you have a heart condition, or a friend too chicken to swim in after you if you get a cramp.
With a dull knife, write a "ghost" message on the inside of your forearm. Don't actually cut yourself and draw blood, just scratch the outermost layer of skin. At first, you shouldn't be able to see it, or if you can it should fade away fast. Then tell a friend you think you are possessed. You can make the message suddenly become visible by rubbing your forearm to make it red.
With a sharp knife, make a small incision between the first and second digits of your right hand. Do it now. Now prove to yourself that your force of will is stronger than your idle curiosity by not reading the next sentense of this entree until the cut heals (stop NOW.) If you have actually sat here reading through all the previous entrees before this one, you deserve the cut, and I doubt you are the type of person whose will could possibly exceed their curiosity anyway. If you really just read that after waiting a week for the cut to heal, I appologize.
Dave <djalleca@aol.com>
Hollis, NH USA - Tuesday, February 15, 2000 at 12:32:48 (PST)
While your sitting at a computer put one hand onto the screen then lift both feet off the floor and with the other hand turn off the monitor. Now touch someone with your free hand it'll give them a give zap but I'd recommend not using just one finger to zap them cos it really hurts so use your whole palm.
Robert Rendler <rendler@yahoo.com>
Melbourne, VI AUSTRALIA - Monday, February 14, 2000 at 17:10:14 (PST)
When I was in the shower chewing gum.I put the gum in the hot water.When I put the gum back into my mouth I noticed that the flaver came back in the gum.That means that if you put gum into hot water then you'll get the flavor back in your gum.
Caleb
Durham, N.C. USA - Saturday, February 12, 2000 at 19:31:25 (PST)
Stand in a completely dark room with your hand on a light switch. Let your eyes get used to the dark. Now briefly flash the lights while watching your hand. You'll see a "snapshot" of your hand at the light switch. If you move your eyes, the image will quickly vanish. Try it a couple of times. Now the weird part. After a flash, but while the image of your hand is still clearly there, move your hand away. The image of the wall and the light switch remain, but the image of your hand fades away. How come?
Bill Grundmann <wrg@ma.ultranet.com>
Hudson, MA USA - Tuesday, February 08, 2000 at 18:39:14 (PST)
Cross One Eye Super Vision! While looking through a screened window at night, pick out a distant light and cross one eye. You will be able to see the wires in the screen in the unfocused globe of light from about any distance from the window! Discovered this 30 or so years ago as a young, bored rural dweller. Works best in the countryside where there isn't too much ambient light at night.
Richard Caudle <richard@cqc.com>
Logansport, IN USA - Tuesday, February 08, 2000 at 08:34:37 (PST)
This works best if u set up your computer so that the microphone attatched to it, (you need a microphone as well), is on. This means when u say something it immidiatley comes out of your speakers really loud. Crank up the volume until you get anoying interference squeek noises, and place the microphone inside of your mouth. Now by altering the shape of your mouth, you can 'play' the microphone. The pitch of the interference patterns will alter depending on the shape of your mouth.
ChrisBus Telford <chrisbus_telford@hotmail.com>
Lancaster, Uk - Sunday, February 06, 2000 at 13:07:40 (PST)
Note: humidity can affect both of these tricks, so try a few times to find best results. Get some friends (works by yourself, but is more impressive with more participents) and a pack of lightsaver candies (peppermint or spearmint) Stand infront of a mirror, turn off the light and looking at your reflections and crunch the lifesavers with your mouths open and watch the sparks fly! This is caused by a piezoelectric effect when crystals in the candy shatter. Also, in a dark room, open a band-aid package; the kind that pulls in half from one end to the other, not the kind with a string. Don't know why this happens with the adhesive???
ErasEr hEad <erzrhead@gte.net>
CA USA - Thursday, February 03, 2000 at 03:36:51 (PST)
Sit in a dark room. I mean REALLY dark! As dark as you can. Then stare into space. Your brain will start making up images because of sensory deprivation. Usually just patches of light. Sometimes works better if you glance around quickly.
Justin <justing.mrl@dubbo.nsw.gov.au>
Australia - Tuesday, February 01, 2000 at 21:05:24 (PST)
Did you ever have an urge to sneeze at an inconvenient time? Like when you are carrying a too full cup of boiling hot coffee? Try this just before you sneeze next. OPEN YOUR EYES WIDE. It is impossible to sneeze with your eyes open. I have used this of ten and it really works, at least for me.
K.Mikolajek <kenkhan@sprint.ca>
Ottawa, Canada - Wednesday, January 26, 2000 at 12:48:32 (PST)
In Word98, at a letter size of at least 20, write a word. Select that word and go to Text->Font. Change the font several times while looking at the word. You will soon reach a point at which the word looks very odd, and you are completely unsure how th e word is spelled.
Bob L. Sturm
San Francisco, CA USA - Saturday, January 22, 2000 at 20:59:44 (PST)
The biggest shock of all time! Yesterday my husband and I jumped my car before I went to work. We got my car started, and my husband pulled the cables off my battery and shut the hood. I got out of my car to give him a kiss goodbye ***while he held the cables still attached to his car*** OW!!!! We both got a nasty shock and had numb lips for an hour.
Beth <beth3177@yahoo.com>
Dayton, OH USA - Tuesday, January 18, 2000 at 13:41:27 (PST)
Space laser battle noises! Get a classic metal Slinky. Grasp hold of the metal loop on one end between your thumb and index finger. Squeeze tightly and put the end of your thumb and index finger into your ear (as far as you can!) so the slinky hangs down from your ear to the grou nd. Use you other hand to pluck at the the slinky coil. Star Wars in your head!
Walter Kicinski <wek@wt.net>
Plano, TX USA - Friday, January 14, 2000 at 13:49:10 (PST)
Preparation: Take an ordinary wire coat hanger and stretch the triangular part into a symetrical diamond shape so that the hook is centered at one end and what used to be the bottom middle is the other. Now dangle it down from your dominate hand, with the hook hangin g down and your index finger at the top of the diamond. With it hanging this way, adjust the hook so that the end points straight up from the ground to the sky. The trick: Take an ordinary penny, heads up, and place it in your other hand, across your index and middle fingers. Gently slip the hook under it, between your fingers and balance the penny on the end of the hook, flat like a table top. It takes a little patience. Ok, you will be surprised to find that it is pretty stable once it is on there, but we're just getting started. With a pendulum movement, rock the hanger back to the left, then with smooth quick acceleration, start spinning it around. Done properly, the penny stays right there and you can walk around, turn it sideways, whatever. It is a little harder to stop, but it can be done. Just start slowing down, and then as it comes over the top, just make a big decelerating loop with your hand. Kids love this one.
Bruce <snaphook@swbell.net>
Katy, TX USA - Thursday, January 13, 2000 at 22:09:42 (PST)
Eat food, it tatses really good, good source of energy.
J <Dont have one>
Miami, FLA USA - Wednesday, January 12, 2000 at 16:40:36 (PST)
Hi.. freezing the moment...... stare at a fan and chew ice, the fan stops for a heartbeat and you can see the individual blades. this also works for hub caps on moving vehicles and has an interesting effect on c.r.t images, flourescent lights, and neon. here's a fun one, find a windowless room with a flourescent light (preferably ceiling mounted) now pour sugar or salt in a steady stream so that it travels at least 4 inches before "landing", look real close at the sugar and you'll see that the stream appears to be going up hill not down. you like your coffee sweet dont you? this one might work for others, have a friend lift you off the ground just high enough to prove that they can and then set you back down, now imagine the sensation of going down in an elevator and have them try (unsuccessfuly?) to lift you again. it's a workable trick but I'm not sure I'm sharing it correctly. here's one I havent tried but really really want to; many of us have played "lite as a feather stiff as a board"- but did you know that it works on objects as well as it does people, I've heard that you can even lift a volkswagon this way. no idea why this works but it deserves to be persued as a technology if it does work, let me know if you lift a car and now that I've remembered this I'll try to get 3 people to help me try it and I'll post my results.
dave <zoeluna@bellsouth.net>
knoxville, tn USA - Monday, January 10, 2000 at 11:02:56 (PST)
I've never been able to see things in 3D (like Viewmasters, 3-D movies etc.) because I have weird eyesight... one eye is perfectly good but the other one is extremely astigmatic, which in laymans' terms means that the eyeball is lumpy, it's not a smoot h surface so the light gets refracted in weird ways and you get blurry vision. But I can see fine (if only in 2D), because I have that lazy-eye thing where the brain only uses one eye and ignores the bad info from the other eye. ANYWAY... y'all were tal king about freaky things that happen when you press your finger to your eyeball? Well at some point when I was a little kid, I discovered that if I pressed my finger onto the side of my BAD eyeball (over the skin of course, but pressing on the eyeball), and if I adjusted the position and pressure just so, I could bring my BAD eye PERFECTLY into focus, and it would stay focused for as long as I held my finger in the same place. I think I'm actually smoothing out the lumps in the eyeball by pressing on it . It gives me even better 3-D vision than using glasses, but it's no good while you're driving... heheh.
Edith Frost <edithfrost@yahoo.com>
Chicago, IL USA - Wednesday, December 29, 1999 at 04:36:47 (PST)
Here's another cool auditory trick; somebody showed me this one years and years ago. Simple preparation with very freaky cool results!! Take a metal coathanger, the kind without plastic coating. Uncurl the top of it and take the hanger apart without breaking it, so it's in the shape of a messed-up U. (You can leave the curly parts on the end, but unfold it into more or less of a squared U-shape.) Now take a piece of string -- not too thin and not too thick, some of soft packaging string will work fine. Cut off a piece maybe three feet long. Tie one end of the string to one end of the coathanger, and the other to the other end. So now you have a wire U-shape that you can hold suspended by this floppy length of string attached to either end of th e U. Okay. NOW... stand up, lean over a little, and hang the string on your head, so the coathanger is about level with your chest. Your head is down, the coathanger is hanging from your head so you can swing it around a little. Now... line up the string on your head so each side lines up with your ears. With bo th index fingers, grab the string on either side and stick your fingers into your ears, making sure the string itself gets into your ears slightly. Hold your fingers there. Now I know you LOOK freaky, but the freakiest part is what you can HEAR right now. Walk over to the desk, or anything solid, and let the coathanger lightly bump against the solid object. You'll hear this amazing cacophany of go ng-noises!!! You'll hear all kinds of crazy things depending on what you bang the coathanger on. This was really hard to explain; it's a lot easier to show you but I hope you'll try it anyway.
Edith Frost <edithfrost@yahoo.com>
Chicago, IL USA - Wednesday, December 29, 1999 at 04:16:03 (PST)
Sit next to somebody who's play an electric guitar, one that's NOT plugged in so you can hear it. If you just sit next to the person, you can hear a little bit of tinny music, right? Now try this: lightly BITE the very end of the guitar, just put you r teeth right down on a wooden part of the head up by the tuning pegs. (Hopefully being careful not to damage the finish.) Now get the person to start playing again... you can suddenly hear the music as crystal-clear as if the instrument were plugged in and you're listening with headphones! The conductivity of the bones in your head, I suppose. I discovered this quite by accident; please don't ask me why I thought about placing my mouth on somebody's guitar while they were playing it!! But I did, and it's very freaky.
Edith Frost <edithfrost@yahoo.com>
Chicago, IL USA - Wednesday, December 29, 1999 at 03:58:00 (PST)
These are simply too fun!
Just one note--In response to getting an egg into a milkbottle, what about this to get it out:
stick the whole thing in a fridge/freezer for a bit. Remove, tilt upside down (so egg is over hole), and SLOWLY warm it up.
I say slowly because way back when, I saw a glass jar literally blast a piece of itself off when it was cooled then heated qui ckly.
With any luck, the egg might go POP! and fly out of the bottle. Hey, do I hear "boiled egg cannon"??
Ryan Weh <urthskape@pacaccess.com>
woodinville, WA USA - Friday, December 24, 1999 at 02:01:24 (PST)
I keep thinking of more!
-Pretend you are young again and try balancing along a beam that's high above the ground (about 3-4 feet). Walk forward at a moderate pace while staring down at it, so the ground is in the background. After awhile, jump off of it and stare at a gravel (
visually "noisy") area. You will notice that an odd "river" of motion seems to move in a vertical line, as if your eyes compensated for the monotony of the moving beam under your feet. Freaked me out first time I saw it!
-Somebody convince me I'm not abnormal here. Work out fairly hard, so that your heart is really pumping. You might be able to feel it in your throat. In fact, open your mouth wide, and make sure your airway is open itself. Then stand facing a solid wa
ll, or easier, hold your hand a couple inches from your mouth. You will literally HEAR your blood pumping within your throat! This also freaked me out when i couldn't figure out where the heartbeat noise was coming from in my room...
-Play mind tricks with people in an elevator. hee-hee-hee!
Isn't this universe great?
Ryan Weh <urthskape@pacaccess.com>
woodinville, WA USA - Friday, December 24, 1999 at 01:45:11 (PST)
Here's a couple: -Like has been mentioned, eat a potato chip in front of a bright red LED display (clock radio, etc.). -I did this long, long ago (elementary school, even), so i dunno if it really works or if I was just in a wacky mood. Get a really close friend. stand face-to-face, and tilt your heads together so your foreheads are actually touching (or close to). Now stare down your friend's face. When I did it, my friend's face looked extremely humorous, and i couldn't stop cracking up. -Here's a cool one I just found. Get one of those plasma-balls (glass sphere that holds lightning-like discharges, and responds to touch)--preferably one whose power and frequency can be changed. Then, maybe tough to do, get an old TV set that has metal buttons that change channels by TOUCH, rather than by pushing them (something with your skin must be detected by it, I suppose). Then, turn on the plasma sphere close to the plugged-in TV set, and play around with the power settings on the sphere, as we ll as its orientation. Mysteriously, my television actually turns on and off, and the channels change themselves constantly, depending on the ball's orientation and power/frequency levels. With one power setting the TV would be on, then just below it it would click off. Maybe this is actually IR light emitted by the ball (do they do that?), but I couldn't repro it on our other TV, and it worked with the remote sensor covered on this one.
Ryan Weh <urthskape@pacaccess.com>
woodinville, WA USA - Friday, December 24, 1999 at 01:13:41 (PST)
Find a iron or steel bar about a foot long that you can comfortably hold in your hand, also set up a bucket or basin of ordinary cool water. While holding one end of the metal bar, warm the other end with a heat source like a stovetop burner or propane torch. When enough heat has conducted through to make holding the bar uncomfortable, plunge the hot end of the bar into the water up to about one half of its length. Contrary to making the bar cooler, the water will "chase" the heat up toward you hand almost instantly, likely making you drop the bar! I am not sure why this would happen as it seems to violate the laws of thermodynamics. The effect may even be useful in some exotic engine design. If you have an explination, let us know about it. Please be careful not to burn yourself or anything else!!! Adults Only...
J. Whitmore <jrw@pctechnician.com>
Wilton, IA USA - Saturday, December 11, 1999 at 00:29:42 (PST)
While watching TV, hold a ruler or knitting needle in one hand and move it rapidly through your field of vision in a windscreen-wiper motion (hand not moving). Diagonal crossbars.
Erik Meltzer <ermel@gmx.de>
Braunschweig, Germany - Wednesday, December 01, 1999 at 11:44:31 (PST)
Hold a stringed instrument (ie guitar) so that you can see a tv/monitor/fast strobe behind one of the strings, lowest note is best. Close one eye and pluck the string. You will see the waveform of the note. Twist the tuning peg to tune the string down so you get a "lump" in the string that you can move up or down the neck.
Grant King <spectre@isellcars.com>
nsw Australia - Tuesday, November 30, 1999 at 03:20:45 (PST)
DRIVE LIKE A MANIAC
While spinning on a swivel chair with my eyes closed, I found it difficult to tell when the chair stopped. This was different than riding in a car, where it is easy to tell when the braking suddenly ceases. When a car comes to a halt, there is a slight jerk. This happens because the decrease OF THE DECREASE of the car's speed is not smooth. This is called "Jerk" by physicists.
Therefor, practice taking your
foot off the brake slowly, so the braking is zero when the car comes to a
complete stop. Passengers who aren't looking out the windows won't
realize that the car has stopped.
If you drive like this
habitually, your passengers will subconsciously know that something is
WRONG, but they won't exactly know what it is!
I hear that some airline pilots strive for this "jerkless" state.
Passengers can't see out of the tiny windows, so when the aircraft has
smoothly halted, they sit and sit while waiting for the tiny "jerk" which
never comes...
billb <
>
Seattle, WA USA - Wednesday, November 10, 1999 at 15:01:49 (PST)
I found this out while looking through a medicine cabinet with mirrored doors. Tell me if it works right. Get two or three mirrors and put them across from each other or in a triangle, whichever works better. Stick your head between the two and you'll have lotsa heads. Infinite. Just try and count em. I think with the three assembly it looks like a countinous dark tunnel stretching out into the infinite. Try different positions and different objects in the mirror. I had the creepy thought of something running down the dark tunnel at me. Creepy.
Arithon <saberVR41@hotmail.com>
USA - Saturday, October 09, 1999 at 20:46:34 (PDT)
Find a clock with with a second hand that produces a "tick" sound when it moves. (The second hand should be easily visible). Go into a very dark room---dark enough that you have to wait for a while before your eyes adjust enough to see the clock. Since night vision is very slow to react, you should see the second hand move *after* you hear the tick.
mark <mark@no.com>
USA - Wednesday, October 06, 1999 at 18:33:32 (PDT)
I've found that if I stare directly at a small dim light in a dark room(I have some glow-in-the-dark stars on the cealing) it will fade out and disappear. I thought at first that there was a spot right in the middle of my eyes that had trouble seeing in the dark. But then I found that if I just pointed my eyes at one of the stars without focusing on it, I could see it. But as soon as I thought about it, it would fade out again.
Maybe since most of the background is black, the brain automatically fills
in the bright spot in the same way that
it fills in the blind spots in your eyes.
Dustin Soodak <dsoodak@virtu.sar.usf.edu>
SARASOTA, FL USA - Wednesday, September 22, 1999 at 11:45:57 (PDT)
Take 3 steps away from the wall with a plain kitchen chair in front of you(on the floor between you and the wall). With feet together, bend from the waist and grab the seat of the chair.Stand up, bringing the chair with you.Women can do this, but men cannot.
Amy <edsel140@hotmail.com>
GA USA - Saturday, September 18, 1999 at 19:59:01 (PDT)
We used to do this at college at night when we were stoned. Get an electronic flash (off a camera). Go to a room that is very dark with the lights out. Have someone stand on a bed. In the dark, the person with the flash aims it at the guy on the bed and says, "One, Two, Three, JUMP!" The guy on the bed jumps to the floor. The person with the electronic flash flashes it once while the guy on the bed is IN THE AIR. If the flash is very brief, everyone in the room will see, via an image produced by retinal fatigue, a totally 3-D image of the guy on the bed floating in mid-air in the middle of the room. Everyone gasps. Very weird when you're stoned. Probably weird enough without drug enhancement....but I never was motivated to try it without drugs. Maybe now YOU will be.
Blaine F. <context@airmail.net>
Dallas, TX USA - Tuesday, August 31, 1999 at 23:21:20 (PDT)
I have Three very freaky ideas that are scary as hell, well some are. 1. This is a cheap trick to freak you and a friend out, go into a dark room with a lit candle put the candle on a table and sit oposite of each other, now this is going to sound stupid but with out laughing stare at the other persons face with the lights of ofcourse but not the candle leave that lit, my explanation for this is your eyes change in the dark and the horrible manifestations that you see are just your eyes adjusting to the light.This can also work with a mirror in a small dark room with a can dle.
2. This is even cheaper just walk into a room and look at one of those so called are conditioner fans that middle class people have, when looking at the fan blink your eyes very quikly and you should see the fan stop and rest and stop and reset till you e
ither die of boredom or your neck snaps.
3.This is a filler trick because i forgot the other one I was going to tell you, This is a trick that can only be done for a few seconds or it may destroy your tv, yeah thats right the tv mans godess of goldeness, take a magnet and really quickly put it o
n the tv screen, once you do this it will turn green, then fastly take it away, this is a really dangerous experiment that can destroy your tv and you, hey I didn't say life was fair!
4.This is a little more expensive of a trick, when you have a Game Boy camera or a video camera and a remote control or a laser tag set you can see the the lasers come out of the remote or laser.
5.To make a ping pong ball float on a poket of air first you need a ping pong ball and a hair drier turn the hair drier on and place the ball where the air is coming out.
If you want more half assed experiments and tricks of the trade email me at cjm3@epix.net
Whosile <Cjm3@epix.net>
Ottsville, Pa USA - Tuesday, August 31, 1999 at 09:11:09 (PDT)
FUN WITH HARMONICS:
While in the shower, try humming in harmony with the noise of the water
running in the pipes. With older plumbing, you can make the pipes rattle
in the walls.
This seems to work well with any noisemaking modern convenience,
especially those with large, flat, metal surfaces (washers, dryers,
dishwashers, fans, central heat and air units, idling cars).
Bonus test o'skill: Try to vibrate a paper cup off the top of a commercial
washer.
Gerald Sanders <luminol@yahoo.com>
USA - Friday, August 27, 1999 at 22:39:10 (PDT)
Listen to a monotonous sound the next time you yawn. Notice how the sound sinks slightly in pitch, then rises slowly back up to normal? Maybe it's just me...
Gerald Sanders <luminol@yahoo.com>
USA - Friday, August 27, 1999 at 22:26:55 (PDT)
!!Proceed with caution!!
While watching TV, use your right index finger to find the lower, right-hand corner of your right eye socket. With the pad of your index finger in this corner, push in *very lightly* on your lower eyelid, just enough to slightly shift the position of your
right eye.
At a certain point, the TV images will start to look 3D, as if you were staring into a diorama.
Gerald Sanders <luminol@yahoo.com>
USA - Friday, August 27, 1999 at 22:23:33 (PDT)
Next time your in the shower sing while the water is running into your mouth sing loud enough that it sounds like a distortion technique makes you sound like the biggest baddest white zombie album ever.
kev <Kev@popnetusa.com>
Indio, CA USA - Friday, August 13, 1999 at 01:53:25 (PDT)
Try this: Go into a dark room (not necessarily VERY dark) and find a light source that is not too big. (A bright LED works fine. A laser pointer is best for this. Also any small light will do. But don't illuminate the room.)
If it's a laser pointer, point it to somewhere but be careful the beam won't reflect back to your eye. If not, hold the thing in front of you and look at it. Soon as the light enters your vision, bright gray lines appear on the left and right sides of the
light. They appear to move slowly in "sine waves" around the sides of the light.
(This really is freaky, so try it out)
GaLGaMeT <galgamet@hotmail.com>
Istanbul, N\A Turkey - Thursday, August 05, 1999 at 02:15:05 (PDT)
How to get a hard boiled egg into a milk bottle without mashing it:
1: Get a hard boiled egg and a milk bottle.
2: Put a egg on the top of the milk bottle. Notice that it won't go in? Wonder why? Probably because it's too big. Now, how do I get the egg into the bottle without mashing the egg?
3: Toss a piece of flaming paper into the bottle, and put the egg back onto the bottle.
4: SHOOMP!
5: So, how do I get the egg out again? Hmmm...
Loren <Alucard31>
VT USA - Tuesday, July 27, 1999 at 01:05:33 (PDT)
Clasp a pencil or pen loosely by its end. Place it down on a flat surface, and waggle it back and forth rapidly, allowing the end of the pencil to swing about. Oooh! Rubber pencil!
Loren <Alucard31>
VT USA - Tuesday, July 27, 1999 at 01:02:03 (PDT)
Place your hand down on a flat surface, palm down. Curl your middle finger underneath your palm. Now try to lift your ring finger. Oooh!
Loren <Alucard31>
VT USA - Tuesday, July 27, 1999 at 01:00:22 (PDT)
Hold your hands out in front of you, palms facing each other. Now, rotate your hands so that your thumbs are facing towards you. Now, move your hands so that your palms are facing each other again, and your thumbs still point at you. Now, lace your f ingers together like this, and without touching yourself at all with any of your fingers, rotate your clasped hands up, so that once again your thumbs face away from you, and your hands are still clasped. Now, the grand finale!!! Concentrate on one finger , and try to lift it without touching it. Ooooh!!! Try it on your friends!
Loren <Alucard31>
VT USA - Tuesday, July 27, 1999 at 00:58:57 (PDT)
Walk away from your computer-monitor, jump up and down lightly but come down on your heels. In the resulting jolt you will see illusionary ripples on the monitor. Tthis is due to the linear projection rate.
Graham Fox <wombat@bc.sympatico.ca>
Kelowna, BC Canada - Thursday, July 15, 1999 at 01:36:14 (PDT)
While looking at an alarm clock or cable box with bright LEDs for the time display, close your mouth and growl while clearing your throat (keep a moderate rumble going). Each LED bar will dance around!
Jas <zaphod@netdoor.com>
MS USA - Saturday, July 03, 1999 at 16:55:18 (PDT)
Go into a dark room, and let your eyes acclimate to the darkness. Then take a photographic strobe (electronic flash) and fire it at a printed page where your eyes are focused. You can read the words on the page for a few seconds in your persistence of vision.
Chuck Luciano <chuck@internut.com>
Denver, CO USA - Tuesday, June 29, 1999 at 17:06:35 (PDT)
Go into a room with a friend and turn out the lights. Wait several minutes until your eyes become accustomed to the dark. Then take turns crunching Wintergreen Lifesavers between your teeth while your mouth is open. Your friend will see green sparks be tween your teeth. A mirror will also display the effect, but will not be near as fun.
Chuck Luciano <chuck@internut.com>
Denver, CO USA - Tuesday, June 29, 1999 at 17:04:29 (PDT)
This works well in a dark room, but there has to be enough light that you can still (just) see your hands. Take some kind of electronic device such as a digital alarm clock, or anything that has LEDs on, and wave it in front of your face. The body of the clock (and your hands) will seem to lag behind the bright LEDs.
Alistair Buxton <ali@ajaybee.demon.co.uk>
UK - Sunday, June 27, 1999 at 21:17:57 (PDT)
If you own a dog(like an austrailian shephard or border collie) that has long hair, place them under covers in a darkened room. (winter time) you will be amazed how much static electricity a dog can repeatedley generate when you see the small electric storm as you lift the covers... Dogs have the utility of themseleves not really ever discharging... because they do not have sweat glands distributed about there bodies....
werner brett <werner_brett@hotmail.com>
USA - Saturday, June 12, 1999 at 13:14:50 (PDT)
While staring at a TV screen from about 30 feet or more away try humming loudly with your mouth closed - try to rattle your teeth - the screen will appear wavy and start to "swim". Vary the pitch of the hum and sometimes you can see raster lines (inter weave lines?) The effect isn't as apparent when you're close to the screen; gets washed out. This trick can be done without humming by resting your skull on anything that vibrates (I once clenched a small DC motor in my teeth while watching Jonny Quest).
Warren <uuls@usa.net>
Gresham, OR USA - Monday, June 07, 1999 at 14:36:54 (PDT)
when on public transport or as a pasenger try looking the other vehicles tires, you can do this by waving your fingers infront of your eyes quickly, you can see the design of the wheels if you make it quick enough.
Karl Emmnuel Sanchez Laursen <Laursen@datasys.com.mx>
Mexico City, D.F. Mexico - Saturday, June 05, 1999 at 18:15:54 (PDT)
1. Wave your hand with your fingers spead out in front of your TV. It looks way different than it normally would.
2. Lift up the front of your bike and spin the front tire. At a cetain point it will look like its stoped spinning and then will look like its spinning in the opposite direction. See if you can keep it at the speed where it looks like its stopped for a c
ouple of seconds.
Brandon Seguin <brandonseguin@hotmail.com>
Windsor, ON Canada - Tuesday, May 18, 1999 at 14:35:05 (PDT)
If you put a toilet roll to one of your eyes, and slowly move your head in the direction of the other eye, somethinng interesting occurs, with the eye without the roll, you will see everything normally, but the eye with the roll will see everything sli ghtly brighter. If you want you can do a simple version with your cupped hands. Another trick (preferbly in a dark room, but not pitch black) is to close one eye, and prod it slightly, creating one of those coloured blotchy type things in the middle of that eye's view, now, if you concentrate hard enough on the blotch, you can see ju st the blotch and pitch black all around it, thus only seeing out of one eye! This takes a LOT of practise.
Richard Norris <R.norris@virgin.net>
England - Wednesday, May 12, 1999 at 14:17:08 (PDT)
You need to be in a room that is completely dark, and your eyes need to be used to the dark. If you take an ice tray and twist it so the ice pops out, you will see colored flashes as the ice cubes break or break free from the tray.
I'm not sure if this was because of some substance that may have been on the ice tray (possibly dish soap?) or what physical processes may go into this. Does anyone else?
Chris Goodwin <archer7@mindspring.com>
Raleigh, NC USA - Wednesday, May 12, 1999 at 06:00:28 (PDT)
try standing with one hand on a vdg and bringing your knuckes near to a busen with the gas running. with luck the resulting spark will light the busen. this demos that the spark is really hot.
alex rice <alexjrice@hotmail.com>
cmabridge, united kingdom - Tuesday, May 04, 1999 at 10:22:13 (PDT)
Here's a strange and subtle 3D effect created by viewing the world through a pair of tiny aperatures:
http:// members.aol.com/ kendunkley/visual.htm
What the heck causes it? Maybe it removes some of the spherical or chromatic aberration from your eyes?
billb
Seattle, WA USA - Monday, May 03, 1999 at 18:03:46 (PDT)
Not recommended for epileptics...
One day when attempting to revise (honest ma) I noticed something a little
weird...
Staring at a plain white desk in a fairly dark room I switched the desk
light on and off rapidly and after a while I noticed all sorts of weird
things happening... Strange colors, planes and tunnels that seemingly move
toward you...
It's best if you don't blink and don't move your head..
Boredom is the mother of invention.
Charlie <ceecd@cee.hw.ac.uk>
Edinburgh, denial Scotland - Monday, May 03, 1999 at 11:28:11 (PDT)
Find a dark room with a mirror in it. Turn on the lights and stare at your reflection for several seconds. While still staring at yourself, turn out the light. As the ambient light in the room fades away, you should see a brief after image of yourself. This After image when I percieve it looks like myself as a ghost! I.E. you will only see absolute light (your skin) and absolute dark (your eye sockets, nostrils, lips, etc. It only lasts for a split second, so you need to look carefully, but you can do this repeatedly. Now make the most evil face you can and try this IF YOU DARE!!! Whoa! Your "EVIL twin" is scary looking, 'eh? Not someone I'd want to meet in a dark alley, and now your alone with them in the dark!! Turn the lights back on - QUICK!!!! ;o>
Patrick Burns <patrick_burns@my-dejanews.com>
Atlanta, GA USA - Wednesday, April 28, 1999 at 07:33:15 (PDT)
Take a thin strand of rubber band and hold it vertically in front of your face while looking at a television set. Now give the rubber band a "twang" with the nearest unoccupied finger. You should see a wave pattern very much like you would expect to see in an o-scope monitor. ( I discovered this phenominon for my self about 30 years ago. I dont know if I'm the only one who knows about it, but I rather doubt it.)
mark warlick <jacofal@webtv.com>
macon , ga USA - Monday, April 19, 1999 at 23:31:31 (PDT)
Here's one that looks very interesting: Inducing Visual Telepathic Hallucinations. Now children, don't damage your mind too much!
Bill Beaty <
>Seattle, WA USA - Monday, January 18, 1999 at 13:33:40 (PST)
Start swinging a pendulum with your hand. Now keep your hand as still as possible and think to another kind of oscillation (for example circular instead of linear) and after a few seconds the oscillation will be transmitted to the pendulum.
Simone <sgremmo@biella.alpocm.it>
- Sunday, January 03, 1999 at 12:16:08 (PST)
This works best in a dark room. Start rubbing your eyes like you do when you have just awaken. Go on rubbing them and soon you will be seeing lots of triangles one connected to the other, forming some kind of wavy moving structure. Now rub your eyes with the lower part of your palms instead of your fingers and the triangles will disappear and will be replaced by some bright moving dots, typically orange, yellow or purple. Continue rubbing your eyes this way and you will see a bright yellow ring with the central hole that slowly shrinks.
Simone <sgremmo@biella.alpcom.it>
- Sunday, January 03, 1999 at 12:12:02 (PST)
Here's some neat eye tricks.
1)
If you happen to be in front of a chain-link fence, or staring at some
very repetitious tiling, you can relax your eyes, as if you were looking
at the horizon, and if you can get the pattern to converge again, the
fence (or tiling) will appear much farther away than it is.
Alternatively, you can cross your eyes, as if to look at something
closer, but it is harder to get your eyes to converge.
2)
Do this one only when *not* driving... if you're moving by a high
tension wire tower, close one eye, and see if you can trick your brain
into making the far leg of the tower be the close one. If you do it
right, the tower will appear to rotate with you, as you drive.
This is like looking at a drawing of a cube, and seeing two different
perspectives; the difference is the mentally assigned 3-D position of 2D
clues.
3)
Rub your eyes for about a minute. I usually see fields of geometric
patterns before my eyes begin to hurt. I used to this as a kid a lot.
I also used to stare at the sun until it became a glowing orange disc.
:-]
That's all I can think of for now.
Terren
Terren Suydam
USA - Wednesday, May 20, 1998 at 14:50:47 (PST)
Here are a few from UK kid lore:
(1) Spooky sausage. Put the tips of your index fingers together and look
at
them without converging your eyes (as for a Magic Eye picture). A phantom
chipolata appears between them. Freaks littlies out first time.
(2) Hole in your hand. Roll up a sheet of paper lengthwise to makle a
tube,
or use the inner from a roll of kitchen paper. Rest it between thumb and
forefinger of your left hand and look through it with your right eye. With
appropriate adjustment of convergence, a gaping hole appears in your hand.
(3) Skull dynamics. This isn't really kid's stuff, unless you count
under-employed electronics designers as kids (which you probably should).
Set up an oscilloscope with no input so it's tracing out a horizontal line
with a sweep time of about 50ms. While looking at it, punch yourself on
the
jaw (not too hard, this is a family show).
The scope will trace out the response of your head to the
punch -
sharp onset with decaying oscillations. Although our brains seem to be set
up to compensate for normal motions of our heads, extracting a stable
world
picture from the wildly gyrating images on our retinas, they can't cope
with this one.
You can get related effects by eating crunchy stuff while
watching
the 'scope, and also with TV. With the latter, the effect gets more marked
the further you are from the screen. Try eating an apple on the other side
of the street from a store with a window display of TVs. Can anyone out
there explain this?
Roger Bridgman;
UK - Thursday, May 21, 1998 at 09:23:34 (GMT)
Try watching TV while brushing your teeth with an electric (electronic ??) toothbrush. This will make the screen look quite weird. Works also with LED-displays used in clocks.
Simon Kainz <skainz@sbox.tu-graz.ac.at>
Graz, Austria - Tuesday, December 01, 1998 at 04:06:05 (PST)
Yeah, it's good to be able to SMELL, but what about us ANOSMICS!!?? Where do we fit in ?? I Cannot smell a thing for 99.9999% of the time..and then I can smell for a few seconds. So I go on smellind BINGES smelling anything in reach(?) until it goes away again. Usually happens in the shower where the pickings are very slim! A haiku...
Anosmia sucks!
Olfactorially challenged nose
Misses summers perfumes
C Terry Allan 1997
Terry Allan <wastenot@goldnet.com.au>
Carisbrook, Vic Australia - Friday, September 11, 1998 at 19:47:47 (PDT)
Thats "handle of a hammer" (below). Anything thinner than your wrist should work fine. Speaking of smoke rings.... A decent smoke ring generator is fairly easy to make. Cut a circular hole in a can of Pringles. Put some buring paper in the can and blow it out (fill the can with smoke). Put the plastic lid back on the can. Tapping on the plastic lid launches smoke rings out the hole. The harder you hit the lid, the faster the rings with travel.
Mark Storer <mstorer@adobe.com>
Kalamazoo, MI USA - Monday, August 10, 1998 at 11:43:28 (PDT)
Squeeze something. Hard. For about 30-60 seconds. Just making a fist works, but something like the handle of a seems to work best. Open your hand very slowly, gently even. There is some resistence, not much. Your hand will slowly "creak" open. Does anyone know what causes this?
Mark Storer <mstorer@adobe.com>
Kalamazoo, MI USA - Wednesday, August 05, 1998 at 08:11:44 (PDT)
I have noticed an optical illusion while working with a milling machine rotary table in my machine shop. If the table is stared at advanced somewhat rapidly by hand in either direction for a period of time,(a full 360 revolution works well),when it is stopped it will give the illusion that the table is advancing in the opposite direction for a few seconds.I would think this might be similar to the effect you see when as a kid you spun around to make yourself dizzy?
Sebastian H. <death@ij.net>
Largo, Fl USA - Monday, July 20, 1998 at 18:08:45 (PDT)
Have you ever experienced how it feels when your car's brakes fail and you are driving at high speed on a crowded road? Try this. Drive down a vacant stretch of road. Imagine a child suddenly crossing the road in front of you to pick up his ball. You want to stop your car now and instead of pressing the brake pedal, press your leg on the floor board. Dont panic!
K Ravinder <k_ravinder@hotmail.com>
Chennai, T.N. India - Friday, July 10, 1998 at 04:28:42 (PDT)
Place palm of hand on computer monitor, with out touching the ground with your feet, turn the monitor on and off continuously, then without touching the ground, reach out and zap someone! Touch their bare skin with your finger and they will be zapped.
Ben Condie <condiebe@mercymackay.qld.edu.au>
MACKAY, qld AUSTRALIA - Tuesday, June 02, 1998 at 22:35:02 (PDT)
Stare at the computer screen while eating carrots or celery or an apple. You'll see strange black horizontal bands appear on the screen. Vibrating eyeballs! Hum a deep note (or blow rasberries hard, or play a low note on your sax) and you'll see moving stripes of distortion crawl across the screen. Move back away from the screen to make this work even better.
Stand in a doorway, arms at your side, palms towards your body. Press the backs of your hands (with your arms) agains the door frame, as if trying to push the frame outward. Press -=hard=- for,about 1 minute. Step out of doorway and relax arms completely. Arms will mysteriously float up to a horizontal position. Creepy!
MARK FERGERSON - Tuesday, June 02, 1998
