How Magician’s Affect Perception to do Magic

If you have been to a magic show and wondered with open mouth astonishment about just how the magician pulled that trick off, I’ve news for you. There is no magic which is not based on science and scientific principles. Most of their spectacular events deal with merely tricking you into believing that something has happened, when in fact it has not.

Perception is the sense we make of the world around us based on the stimulus received from our sense organs. In case of the magician, our eyes perceive seeing something based on the raw stimulus the magician provides, but very often this perception is false.  The raw stimulus is manipulated by the magician in such a manner that what we think we see is not what actually is happening.

Take for instance the three card trick where the queen is shuffled along with two other ordinary cards. We think we have marked the position of the queen before the magician begins shifting the locations of the cards and follow that card well enough. However what we do not realize is that before the magician began shuffling he had already changed the location of the queen facing downwards.

So no matter how well we follow the card we are always looking at the wrong one and will never point at the queen when he asks us to. The concept of what we perceive and how we perceive things have been the subjects of major scientific research over the years. However it is the magicians who have made best use of this principle to entertain and amaze us.