The Science of Magic - Clip 4 - Visual Perception and Distraction

Misdirection is used to great effect by magicians. Dr. Ben Tatler builds on the change blindness experiments (Clip 3) to explain how magicians use distraction to fool the audience.

This talk describes eye-tracking experiments and how the audiences' eyes follow the gaze and gestures of the magician.

This talk was hosted by the Tayside and Fife branch of the British Science Association on Wednesday 17th March 2010.

• Category

  Science & Technology

[RevealingResearch]

Thanks for the comments MetalicB0x. Some of the tricks might be classics but I hope the video explains the psychology about why we often fall for them, at least the first time around.

[zungzung91]

Test your awareness

[MetalicB0x]

clearly someone must have figured this out a while ago, these tricks are ages old id imagine, thanks for the upload!

[MetalicB0x]

 very clever

[Roger Skomp]

even electronic brain pancake crystal elderly