Jennifer George
The Paw Print
The Chemistry Magic Show has become a tradition at Adams State College over the last twenty years. It is an opportunity for students to share what they have learned and also to entertain the community.
This year the science department performed in front of an almost full house, with most of the audience being children. In the show they had everything from a rainbow in a tube to crushing a soda can without using your feet.
To start off the show they taught the children in the audience a bit of science safety. Whenever one of the magic performers came on stage with their safety goggles on wrong the crowd was to shout at them until they fixed the problem. The children in the crowd loved this and once the goggles were corrected the kids would cheer for safety.
Next, the first bit of magic for the show. One of the students, Bryce Turner explained different elements by using fire. He burned copper, stratum, and sodium, and the flames turned green, red, and bright yellow. Eight year old Alanine and her three year old sister Brooklyn both said this was their favorite part of the show.
Next up was the students created a rainbow in a tube. You could hear the audience murmuring from excitement as the purple liquid changed color with every different liquid added. With the next trick it was shown how to crush a soda can without stepping on it. Boiling water was put inside the can, and then the can was flipped over into a plate of cold water. This created something like a vacuum and the crowd cheered the can on as it was quickly crushed before their eyes.
After this trick the science students decided to wow the crowd by turning an everyday pickle into a light bulb. You could hear some of the kids in the audience whispering, not believing it would work but the science students attached some wires to a pickle and hit the lights. Within a few moments they had that pickle glowing in the dark and the kids excitedly cheering them on.
And then came Frankenpumpkin, which was a carved out pumpkin being used for a science experiment. The science students wanted to see if they added some chemicals to water inside the pumpkin if they could blow its top off. They did in fact, and with a bang that made many in the audience jump and laugh. Then came a neat trick where one of the students lit a fire, and then put a mesh net formed into a circle around the fire, and spun it. To the audience, especially the children’s astonishment, the fire began to grow and spin, the faster she spun the het, the larger the fire grew and the louder the audience cheered.
The next act made many cringe in their seats, for one of the students was playing with a hammer, cinder bloke, and fellow student. What happened was this, one student laid on the ground with the cinder bloke on his chest while the other student took a hammer and hit the bloke. Many in the audience were nervous he would get hurt, but remember, this is a magic show and student on the ground stood up unscathed and to a round of applause.
Next, the finale act before the grand finale perplexed many of the children in the audience. One of the students took a real dollar bill, soaked it in alcohol and water, and then lit it on fire. The fire then went out and the dollar bill didn’t have a burn, you could hear kids asking how the fire didn’t burn the dollar. A very successful magic trick indeed.
This magic show literally ended with a bang when the students sent off good old fashioned bottle rockets and played music with fire. That’s right the lights went out, the audience was hushed and students started playing music. They turned on the propane tank was hooked up to a very large tube sitting on the table on stage and lit the area above the tank on fire. Next they turned on the music and we watched as the sound waves coursed through the fire and we could physically see the music in the flames. This was a magical bit of science that the crowd loved. The audience’s applause was almost as deafening as the bang from those bottle rockets.
Photo by Brenda Figueroa: Dr. Christopher Adams gives a fiery performance
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