MAGICAL ROD

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The marker and the brush appear in different shapes and sizes depending on the liquid where they are immersed and on the visual angle: this phenomenon is due to the fact that the light bends if it passes through the interface between two different materials.

We can’t see a glass rode immersed in glycerine or in soy oil because these liquids have the same refraction index of the glass. This is a good hint for the following conjuring trick:

the demonstrator breaks a glass rod in half, drops it into a beaker filled with soy oil (or glycerine), waits till the rod disappears in the fluid; then he puts his hand in the beaker and pulls out a whole rod. Of course, the broken rod is hidden in the beaker and the unbroken rod was there all the time.