FAMILY FUN

New Zealand Tablet, 15 November 1906, Page 38

FAMILY FUN

The Prisoner Released. — Place a sixpence in t-he bottom of a glass, and over the latter put a half-crown. The puzzle is to remove the small coin from beneath the larger one, without touching either of the coins, or touching or upsetting the glass. To do this capital trick you must blow with considerable force down one side of the glass upon the edge of the half-crown. The sixpence will be expelled by the force of the air, and will fall upon the upper surface of the half-crown or upon the table. A little practice will render the performance of this feat very easy.

The Double Meaning.— Place a glass of any liquor upen the table, put a hat over it., and say : ' 1 wi-U engage to drink the liqugr under that hat, and yet I'll not touch the hat.' You then get under the table, and after giving three knocKs, you make a noise with your mouth as if you were swallowing the liquor. Then getting from under the table, you say : ' Now, gentlemen, be pleased, to look.' Some one, eager to see if you drank "the liquor, will raise up the hat, when you instantly take- the glass, and drink the contents, saying, ' Gentlemen, I have fulfilled my promise. You - are all witnesses that I did not touch the hat.'

Pleasing Optical ...Appearance.— lf a soap-bubble be blown up and set "under a glass, so that the motion of the • air may not affect .it, as the water glides down the sides and the top grows thinner, several - . colors, will successively appear at the top, and spread - themselves from thence hr rings down the sides of the bubble; till they vanish in the same order in which th«y appeared. At length a black spot appears at the top,- and spreads till the bubble bursts. - ' • The thinnest substance ever observed is the aqueous ~ film of the soap bubble previous to its bursting ;- yet it is capable of reflecting a- faint image of a candle, or the sun. " Hence ifis thickness must correspond with" what Sir Isaac Newton calls the ' beginning of^black ' which appears in- water at the thickness of the seven hundred- and fifty thousanfth part of an inch.