have you ever wanted to know what it would look like if you could move things with your mind
yeah me too
welcome to impossible science
hey everyone it's jason latimer the world champion of magic coming to you with another impossible
science where we take impossible topics and we bring them to life with science oh that's where
that name came from now telekinesis for those of you who don't know it's about moving objects with
your mind now if you believe in telekinesis raise my hand yeah i know i don't really believe in it
either because i don't have that superpower but it doesn't mean i can't use science to make that
illusion possible in fact today i'm gonna share that secret with you so that you can
blow your friends minds and it uses straws so grab some straws i'm gonna show you how to use
the force okay for telekinesis first you have to get yourself in the right mindset
no i'm just kidding that has nothing to do with this just grab a straw and i'm gonna use a salt
shaker but it doesn't have to be a salt shaker i'll explain why at the end first let's take
the straw out now you're gonna want a dry straw or clean straw for this and place it on top just like
this all right now using only my telepathic powers i'm going to see if i can move this straw ready
i'll get it to spin all the way around
in the other direction
now i know what you're thinking he's secretly moving the table without telling us no i'm just
kidding it's all about the science let me explain now we've learned about sac electricity on other
episodes of impossible science but this time you are the secret by secretly rubbing a plastic straw
against paper before we do this effect i generate static electricity negatively charged electrons
jump from the paper to the plastic making our straw have an excess of negatively charged
electrons when your skin gets near negatively charged electrons the electrons on the straw
repel the negatively charged electrons on your skin this causes the electrons on your skin to
move out of the way as the electrons disperse they leave behind a small area on your skin where there
are more protons than electrons making just that section a small local area with a positive charge
with your skin slightly positively charged and your straw slightly negatively charged
the straw is now attracted to you opposites attract did you see me charge up the straw with
paper take a closer look okay there's three major ingredients to doing this experiment
the first one is the surface we'll be doing it on i tend to use salt shakers because the bevel
on the top of the salt shaker they're curved so that straw is actually teetering on there
and there's very little friction for it to spin around but that means you can also do it with like
a bottle cap anything where the straw is not just resting all the way across because that
would be really hard for it to spin on the next thing to do is the placements of your hands you
don't want them on the same side of the straw the straw won't know which way to spin because
they're going to be both pulling towards your hand and lastly the charging of the straw well that's
easy to do you can either use the paper as you drag it off to charge the straw or just take a
paper napkin and tell everybody you just need to clean off the straw and get all the oils off of it
you're really taking electrons from the napkin and putting them on the straw now the cool thing about
this is this straw is now negatively charged and when it gets close to your fingers it's actually
just displacing the electrons in your hand so what happens the electrons are pulling away so that's
relatively a positive charge right there so when i place my thumb near it it's slightly
attracted to my thumb if i put my fingers on the opposite side it's attracted to my fingers
same as if i do the opposite side now important to realize i can't do the same side because they
cancel each other out this guy's pulling and this guy's pulling so you want to hold him like this
where the fingers are closer on one side and the thumbs on the other and then once he gets
going you can just keep the momentum going and you can go back and forth and it really comes down to
making sure that your hands are on opposite sides see that so you can either try to do it by side
of hand and make it look like your hands are on opposite sides where these fingers are closer to
the straw than these than your thumb or you can do it by like this it gets a little bit easier as it
spins around but the real secret is the placement of your hands to throw everybody else off
that's how you're going to give everybody the illusion of telekinesis by always remembering
you could use static electricity and nobody would see it now if you enjoy just making
the impossible possible let me know in the comments below and click the like button and
subscribe to the channel and until next time stay curious because right question changes everything
one day that's gonna work it's gonna blow everybody away
maybe if i say i'm using my brain to control my hands so that's telekinesis maybe maybe you