We all have preconceived notions of the way that the world works. When those ideas are turned on their head, conflict ensues and resolution is sought (hopefully).

Discrepant events, presented in the proper format, have been show to stimulate the interest of students in finding out, “How did that happen?” We have much anecdotal evidence that leads us to believe that a scientific demonstration or experiment, presented as a magic trick, is a tool that that frequently works towards this end.

Many students and teachers are not interested in, fear, or dislike science. My methods make science somewhat palatable to those who would otherwise be less than engrossed.

One may take a topic, present a number of ‘magic tricks’ that more often than not are greeted by ‘ooh’s and ahh’s’, ask some questions of the audience regarding how they think the trick(s) works, and then go on to explain the principle(s) used. The principles discussed are geared to various school districts’ specific curricula.

The participants will see approx. three to four widely different different effects for the same principle. The effects all look different, but in the end, they work for the same reason: e.g. air pressure, friction, inertia, center of gravity/mass, sound, light, magnetism, heat, electricity, body structure, chemistry, perception, etc.

At other times I will present a trick as an analog to a phenomenon that is not practical to see on an everyday scale, such as quantum weirdness (tunneling, entanglement, indeterminacy) or relativistic effects (twin paradox, mass approaching infinity as light speed is approached, time dilation). In these instances the magic methodology is not explained to the students but rather used as a demonstration of what we would perceive the phenomenon on the scale under discussion.

The classes/workshops help teachers in presenting their own demos as discrepant event/magic trick, performance pieces in their own voices. They will not become clones of Friedhoffer. When possible we will go over specific areas that the teachers request. If no specific requests are forthcoming, a variety of subjects from the standards will be selected by me, discussed, demonstrated and dissected.

212 - 794 - 9654

rfriedhoffer@gc.cuny.edu information@sciencetrix.com

Home l Contact l About Us