Transcript
Male 1: Hey, Heather.
Heather: Hi.
Male 1: Could I borrow some rubber bands from you, actually? A small one.
Heather: I have two, actually.
Male 1: Oh, cool, borrow this one right here.
Heather: That way.
Male 1: …. Actually, check this out. It’s pretty cool. I put on my first two fingers. Now watch. It’s going to jump to these two fingers. Wouldn’t that be a cool illusion? Watch this.
Heather: Yeah.
Male 1: Why don’t you just blow. It jumps. Was that great? I’ll do it one more time, Heather. Watch.
Heather: Okay.
Male 1: It’s on these two. Watch this. All I have to do is blow. It jumps. Actually show you how that’s done. No, seriously. Believe it or not, it’s something called sleight of hand. Basically, when you’re not looking, it actually jumps from here to here. It goes so fast that you can’t actually register it. But you know what? I’m going to go one step further. Can I borrow another rubber band from you?
Heather: I have one more.
Male 1: Cool. Check this out. I’m going to wrap my fingers up right now. So that becomes impossible. Now it can’t come out. It’s blocked.
Heather: Yeah.
Male 1: Okay? Just like Houdini. Check this out. Watch. Blow. Now that’s impossible.
Heather: What? [laughs] Wow.
Heather: That was awesome.
Male 1: Thank you.
Okay, here’s the secret to the jumping rubber band. For this illusion you need two rubber bands. One of them should be pretty small. And one of them could be actually any size rubber band. Regular 19s would be fine. Something thick would be good too, actually. Basically, you’re going to put the rubber band around your first two fingers. And to make it jump to the other two fingers, basically what you’re going to do is you’re going to pull the rubber band. And you’re going to bend the fingers and insert the fingers into the rubber band. And basically the rubber band’s going to be wrapped around all four fingers below the first knuckle. So that when you open your hand, it actually jumps.
So I’ll do that one more time for you. Basically, it’s on the first two fingers. You stretch it out. Remember, this is actually not the audience view. It’s your view. Audience is on the other side, so you don’t see this happening. You pull it. The rubber band’s wrapped below the first knuckle. Around the nail, actually. And when you open your hand, it jumps. So basically, when I do the second part of the illusion where I tell them I’m going to teach them, I tell them that it jumps off and onto these hands. These fingers. So it jumps like this. Basically what I do is I wrap the rubber band, twist here, twist, twist. Now they think it’s impossible because of my false explanation.
Basically what happens is you do the same thing again. Bend your fingers. Goes below the first knuckle. When you open your hand, it jumps to the other side. So basically that was a false explanation. And they get fooled either way. And that’s the explanation for the jumping rubber band.
