If you've ever wanted to impress your friends or colleagues, homemade magic tricks with fire are the way to go. The sense of danger is spellbinding to an audience and will get everybody clapping. However, to avoid injury or damage, care should be taken when performing these tricks.
Lighting a Used Match
Take out a box of matches to light your candle or cigarette. Then 'pretend' to notice that all of your matches have been used. Proceed to strike the used match anyway and watch it light, awing your audience.
To do this trick, all you need to do is take an unused match and dip it in black ink. Wait for the ink to dry and then dip it in ash so that it looks like a used match. However, when struck, the match will light like any normal match.
Burning Money
Take a dollar bill and soak it in a mixture of water and alcohol. Alcohol has a high vapor pressure, causing the alcohol to attach to the outside of the bill, while the water soaks into the inside of the bill. Since the alcohol is situated on the outer layer of the bill, when you take a lighter and hold it to the wet bill, it will immediately alight but will not burn the bill. The bill will burn until the alcohol has burned off, leaving only a slightly damp bill behind.
Jumping Candle Flame
The Jumping Candle Flame trick is a good one to perform at the dinner table to impress your guests. It involves relighting a blown out candle with a match by forcing the flame to travel on the path that is left by the smoke of the extinguished candle.
Light a match with your candle's flame, then proceed to blow out the candle. Hold the lit match above the extinguished candle-wick and watch as the flame 'jumps' from the match to the candle, lighting the candle. This trick works because the heat from a candle's flame vaporizes the wax. This wax will remain in the air temporarily, and if another source of heat, ie the match, is applied fast enough, the wax in the air will reignite the wick of the candle.
Looking Fire Resistant
Light a match and pass it backwards and forwards around your fingers, keeping your fingers spread so that the heat can rise between them and not burn you. After your have suitably impressed your audience, take a drink from an ice-cold glass, pressing your thumb and forefinger hard against the glass. This will temporarily "freeze" your fingers. Light a match, lighter or cigarette and use your frozen thumb and forefinger to extinguish the flame. Your fingers will be too cold to burn while pressed against the fire source.
