THAT’S THE WAY THE COOKIE CRUMBLES (24 page)

Have you ever had the urge to walk on red-hot coals? Maybe not. But you’ve probably been in a hurry to thaw a piece of meat that you forgot to take out of the freezer. Let me try to shed some light on these two activities — which, believe it or not, are scientifically connected.

You probably remember the infomercial for “Miracle Thaw” that goes something like this: “You’ll never worry again about forgetting to thaw meat! Just take the meat from the freezer, put it on the miraculous thawing plate, and in minutes it’s ready to be cooked. Your days of uneven microwave defrosting are over.” To emphasize that the product was a true technological marvel, the infomercial showed an ice cube melting almost instantaneously on the Miracle Thaw. Should we bow our heads in reverence, or is there a more mundane explanation for this purported miracle? In order to understand what is going on here, let us digress for a moment and look at the mysterious practice of fire walking.

Who hasn’t been amazed by the feat of feet treading on glowing coals? Some motivational gurus claim that one needs special powers in order to do this. And, of course, they alone are capable of teaching the mind-control techniques that protect the feet from the red-hot embers. Popular motivational speaker Tony Robbins is perhaps the most famous proponent of this idea, and he even suggests that successful fire walking is proof that his seminars have taught people to overcome extreme adversity. With the right mental focus, he asserts, we can rearrange the molecules of our feet so that they can withstand the heat. Indeed, many of his followers claim that the practice has made them feel powerful, rejuvenated, and less reliant on doctors. Robbins even says that he’s seen some cancers go into remission after his fire-walking sessions. If the mind can conquer the coals, he implies, then it can also conquer disease. But you don’t need metaphysical mumbo-jumbo to conquer high temperatures — plain old down-to-earth physics will do.

Ah . . . those high temperatures. Therein lies the secret. It is not only the temperature of a material that determines its potential for causing burns, but also its heat content. Temperature and heat content are very different things. Temperature is a measure of how rapidly molecules are moving about in a material. The faster they move, the higher the temperature. When rapidly moving molecules bump into slower-moving molecules, they can transfer their energy to them: the fast molecules slow down, and the target molecules speed up. What does all this mean? When we touch a hot object, the molecules in our hand speed up, and we feel heat.

But the heat we feel is dependent not only on how fast the molecules in the hot material are moving, but also on how many molecules are available to transfer their energy. In other words, it depends on the heat content of the material. A sparkler of the type used on birthday cakes serves as an illustration. The sparks that it produces are very hot, but they do not burn because they have a small mass and therefore do not contain enough molecules to cause burning by energy transfer. However, if you were to touch the sparkler itself, you’d get a nasty burn. Its temperature is the same as the sparks it sends out, but it has far more molecules ready to transfer their energy. Similarly, when you reach into an oven, your hand doesn’t burn, because the mass of the air molecules in the oven is small and does not contain enough heat. If you touch the aluminum cake pan, however, you’ll yowl because it has a much greater mass. Furthermore, aluminum is a very good heat conductor, so as soon as some heat transfers from the surface to your hand, it is replenished from the interior of the metal.

A knowledge of heat transfer is certainly handy — especially if you’re buying jade. Experienced jade buyers can tell if a sample is real or fake just by its feel. Real jade has a high thermal conductivity, and it carries heat away from the hand very easily; fake jade doesn’t. Basically, real jade is real cool.

Fire walking, on the other hand, is really hot, but it does have a cool explanation. When coals burn, their surface forms a spongy, soft layer of soot. Although this layer is quite hot, it is not massive. Relatively little energy is transferred to the foot. Also, since the coals conduct heat poorly, the heat transferred to the foot is not quickly replenished from below. Consequently, the footprints that a firewalker leaves behind are black, demonstrating that the surface of the coal has cooled down. So, it certainly isn’t the rearrangement of the molecules in the feet through mind power that enables a person to walk on hot coals — it’s the low heat content of spongy coal.

Now, back to our miraculous thawing device. It’s really just another example of heat transfer. Think of the frozen meat as your foot, and the metal thawing plate as the bed of coals. Of course, this time we want the opposite of fire walking: we want the efficient transfer of heat to the meat. So we choose a material capable of replenishing with ease the heat transferred to the meat — in other words, a good conductor. Aluminum is a good conductor, and it’s cheap. As it transfers heat to the meat, it picks up energy from the air. The thawing plate serves as a conduit of heat energy from the air to the meat. But if all this is true, then the special plate isn’t really necessary. Any good conductor will do the job.

However, just to make sure that I hadn’t missed some technological breakthrough, I decided to put Miracle Thaw to the test. First, I made a batch of standard-size ice cubes. Then I gathered together a variety of pots and pans. I also assembled some helpers — one wife and three daughters — for the epic experiment. Our audience was a curious cat. One by one, we placed the ice cubes on the various unheated test surfaces and, using a stopwatch, measured the time it took for each cube to melt completely. The results were conclusive. The copper pan was wonderful. The waffle iron was great. So was an aluminum frying pan. Miracle Thaw trailed the field. Even a stainless steel sink outperformed it. The overall winner? No contest. Our cat had taken an interest in the proceedings, and he decided to find out what this nonsense was all about. He began to lick one of the ice cubes, and it melted in a jiffy. Pretty good heat transfer there, but somehow I don’t think we could market the cat as a meat-thawing device.

So, the secret behind Miracle Thaw and walking on hot coals lies in an understanding of temperature and heat content. If you are still in doubt, just ask a firewalker to place an aluminum sheet (or several Miracle Thaws — which have by now been relegated to the discount bin) over a bed of hot coals. The metal will reach the same temperature as the coals. Now ask the prospective walker to focus his mind, rearrange his molecules, and take the fire walk. He’ll probably hotfoot it out of there real quick.

The year is 1819. The place is the small French town of Blois. All of a sudden, the usual quiet is broken by the shrill sound of a trumpet. Everyone knows what this means: a street conjurer is about to begin his performance. Adults and children quickly gather around the performer. He mounts a bench to allow his audience a better view. Accordingly, some call him a “mountebank.”

Anticipation and excitement crackle in the air as Dr. Carlosbach starts his wonderful demonstration of legerdemain. Little balls magically appear, vanish, or congregate under three inverted cups — Dr. Carlosbach is attempting a classic magic trick, called “the cups and balls.” To the simpleminded onlookers, it seems as if the good doctor is achieving the impossible. And Dr. Carlosbach does nothing to discourage the belief that he has been blessed with supernatural powers. The townspeople listen enthralled as the doctor describes the other talents he possesses. He can ensure good health by destroying the vermin that infest their bodies. He can also flush out worms and distill noxious body odors. How can he do all this? Simple. The doctor will sell them some Vermifuge Balsam, a marvelous product “invented by Egyptian sages of old,” for the purpose of preserving mummies.

Then, as the onlookers rush forward to grab some of the miraculous elixir, Dr. Carlosbach bursts into hearty laughter. He explains to the puzzled crowd that they’ve been had — the Vermifuge Balsam is nothing more than water. All he wants to do, he explains, is put them on their guard against the charlatans who routinely deceive them. For in those days the streets of French towns and villages were filled with mountebanks peddling a variety of quack nostrums to the gullible. Through his mastery of a few magic tricks, the typical mountebank was able to convince simple people that he possessed supernatural abilities.

Dr. Carlosbach felt troubled by the deception and the fraudulent use of the art and science of prestidigitation that he saw all around him. This clever street conjurer deserves recognition as one of the world’s first debunkers of nonsensical therapies. But he deserves credit for something else as well. His performance on that street in Blois stirred the passions of young Jean Eugen Robert, who would go on to become one of the greatest conjurers the world has ever seen.

Magicians have been called the scientists of the stage. The wonders they perform may appear to be pure sorcery, but their tricks actually have very down-to-earth explanations — which of course they keep secret from the audience. Many of their effects involve sophisticated technology, and magicians are always keen to improve their acts by making use of the latest scientific advances. Jean Eugen Robert-Houdin (he added his wife’s maiden name to his own after their marriage in 1830) is a prime example of a performer who mystified his audiences with a blend of old-fashioned prestidigitation and newfangled science.

After Dr. Carlosbach had whetted his appetite for conjuring, Robert-Houdin began to devour books on the subject. He practiced and practiced his sleight of hand, bent on becoming a magician. In the meantime, he had to earn a living, so he followed in his father’s footsteps and became a clockmaker. His choice was fortuitous, because the mechanical expertise he developed would later be extremely useful in designing magic effects. In 1837, Robert-Houdin patented an alarm clock that not only woke the sleeper but also presented him with a lighted taper. He also invented the first burglar alarm, the first fire alarm (perhaps motivated by the self-lighting clock), and a variety of automata — such as “The Writer,” a mechanical man that would

answer onlookers’ questions in writing. By 1845, Robert-Houdin had earned enough money through these ventures to organize the first of many Soirees Fantastiques, held in Paris, which would evolve into a full-scale traveling magic show.

Robert-Houdin was the first to perform in full evening dress, unlike other conjurers of the era, who donned colorful, flowing robes and conical hats decorated with half-moons and stars. He popularized the suspension illusion — still one of the most widely performed effects in magic — by adding a new twist. Ether had just been introduced as an anesthetic, and Robert-Houdin cleverly wove it into his act. As backstage assistants poured ether onto hot shovels, flooding the theater with ether fumes, the magician explained that the chemical had the miraculous effect of making bodies defy gravity. His son then came on stage, and the magician promptly “put him to sleep” with ether. At this point, the young subject rose into the air; he remained there, suspended, with no apparent means of support. This illusion had a huge impact on people, and many of Robert-Houdin’s rivals copied it. John Henry Anderson, a Scot, performed it as “La Suspension Chloroforméen,” paying homage to his countryman James Simpson, who had introduced chloroform as an anesthetic.

Robert-Houdin retired from magic after many successful European tours. He wanted to apply his energies to exploring the newly discovered phenomenon of electricity. But the government of France called him out of retirement to undertake, of all things, a political mission. Algeria was then ruled by the French, but the leaders of a religious sect known as the Marabout were attempting to stir the populace to revolt against their European oppressors. The Marabout believed that their chiefs had miraculous powers and were ready to follow them into battle. These “miraculous powers” consisted of some simple conjuring tricks that, to the uninitiated, appeared truly magical. So, in 1856, Robert-Houdin traveled to Algeria to show the people that French power was greater than Marabout power.

A French emissary invited the heads of the Algerian tribes to a special theatrical performance. That night, Robert-Houdin strode onto the stage and performed a number of his usual effects. Cannon balls magically appeared, lit candelabra were produced, and coins vanished. This aroused no great excitement — most people in the audience had seen such marvels before. Then the magician brought out a small wooden box with a brass handle, which he placed in the center of the stage. “Can anyone lift this box?” he asked. The answer was a roar of laughter. Robert-Houdin selected a particularly large and muscular audience member — a Marabout leader — and asked him to come on stage. The man easily lifted the little chest, delighting the audience. “I will now proceed to rob you of all your strength,” the conjurer continued, waving his arms over the puzzled strongman. “Behold, you are now weaker than a woman!” (The World Wrestling Federation’s Chyna would not be born for over a hundred years.) The grinning man bent to pick up the chest once more, but his grin soon vanished. He struggled and strained, but he could not budge the chest. Suddenly, he screamed and let go of the handle. Sweating and in a panic, he retreated to his seat.

Robert-Houdin had put his electrical knowledge to use. The bottom of the chest was made of a metal that could be attracted by a powerful electromagnet concealed below the stage. At the magician’s signal, an assistant turned on the current and activated the magnet. No human could have lifted the box then. Finally, he gave another signal, and an induction coil discharged a huge shock through the handle of the chest, causing the Marabout leader to howl in pain. Then, as audience members whispered to one another about the Frenchman’s power, Robert-Houdin introduced a young Moor. He asked the Moor to stand on a table and then covered him with a large cone. When he removed the cone, the Moor had disappeared. Within minutes, the frightened audience had vanished as well. The proposed revolt against France never materialized. Robert-Houdin’s mixture of science and magic had saved the day for France. The great magician died of pneumonia in 1871, but his name was soon reincarnated. Erich Weiss added an “i” and became Harry Houdini. Robert-Houdin’s famous namesake proved to be not only an outstanding magician and escape artist but also a scourge of fake mediums and charlatans. Just like Dr. Carlosbach.