You raise a good point about perceptions. When we
were doing our lightning show using a 2.3 million volt
coil, one of the demonstrations was to pass out
various size fluorescent tubes to the audience. We
would then turn out all the lights and power up the
coil, the tubes of course would all light up and
people would wave them around in the darkness in
wonder.
After a few minutes and a brief explanation about what
was happening by our narrator, we would turn the
lights back on, turn the coil off and explain that our
assistant was going to collect the tubes.
At that time, Ron Barker was heavily involved in this
project and had some great ideas for theatrics. One
of which was a little hand held gadget he picked up at
a local magic shop. It fit inside the closed hand and
looked kind of like one of those 'joy buzzers' except
this one had a slim tube that fit between your fingers
and was barely visible.
This thing had a spring loaded flint on it, a windup
spring mechanism that rotated a textured wheel and a
striker that pushed the flint against the rapidly
rotating rough wheel. It resulted in a shower of
sparks that shot out of the tube hidden between your
fingers.
Ron got the idea of using this during the collection
of the tubes, he was the guy who went to collect the
tubes but not before the narrator (Wayne) explained to
people that some people might hold a charge that would
have to be dissipated by touching their neighbor or
something metal. It was explained as being rare but
it did happen on occasion.
The audience, having witnessed the 12-15 foot
electrical bolts from the coil was now loaded with
this expectation of ELECTRICITY rather than sparks.
So, Ron would collect a few of the tubes and pick
someone who looked particularly gullible, when he
reached that person, he would comment that they looked
like they might be holding a charge and he needed to
help them dissipate it by touching their arm or
shoulder.
He would use the hand with the woundup sparker and
when he pressed the button, a major spark shower would
be thrown off resulting in the person jumping out of
their seat and everyone in the vicinity phreaking
out....it was totally hilarious...and everyone got a
kick out of this surprise effect.
As everyone was laughing from the reaction of the
victim and the surrounding people, we asked them what
they saw, everyone replied they saw electrical sparks,
not discrete sparks from a flint shower...it was
weird, this transposition based on their EXPECTATION
and ASSOCIATION with electricity was most intriguing.
Once we showed them what had produced the sparks and
what they truly looked like, NOW they could see the
discrete sparks but prior to that, they expected
electricity and IMO, that is what colored their
perceptions.
It reminded me of the reports about the Indians not
being able to see the Spanish ships in the harbor
because they had never seen anything like that and so
it was new to their perceptions.
I think any good magician realizes this foible with
human perception and takes advantage of it to produce
difficult to explain effects.
--- Nick Hall <nick@domini.org> wrote:
> At 10:54 13/10/99 -0500, Jerry wrote:
>
> >Now, when we drag in Searl and Hamel, both of which
> report the
> >production of a spinning plasma around their models
> once they have been
> >in operation for a few minutes, only then do they
> take off according to
> >the reports.
>
> Having thought about this aspect, I`m now asking
> myself a simple question:
>
> Would these guys have been able to distinguish "red
> light, sparks and heat" as produced in plasma
> from "red light, sparks and heat" as produced by
> enormously high eddy currents circulating in the
> metal surrounds....
>
> I don`t know about Searle, but Hamel wasn`t actually
> there when it melted down - he only noted its
> effects from _outside_ the shack. Even if he had
> been there, he wouldn`t have had time to carefully
> measure the phenenomenon to make the distinction
> between eddy-current meltdown and plasma-meltdown.
=====
=================================
Please respond to jdecker@keelynet.com
as I am writing from my work email of
jwdatwork@yahoo.com.........thanks!
=================================
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