All Dried Up

Here is a new twist on an old activity. This is featured in my book, Presentation Wizardry, 33 Simple Safe Science Tricks for Speakers and Trainers - www.calderonconsulting.com I will start with the original idea from the book and then share the twist with you.

Original Idea

All Dried Up

Make water disappear.

What You Need
3 disposable cups
1 container of slush powder or lightning gel from a magic store

Getting ready
Put about 1 tbsp. of slush powder into the bottom of one of the cups.
Don’t let anyone see you do this.

What you do
1. Place the three cups, A, B, and C side by side on the table.
2. Show the audience the water in the container
3. Tell the audience you are challenging them to follow the water.
4. Pour the water from cup to cup, shuffling the cups around as you do this.
5. The trick is to only pour water in the cup that has the slush powder in it at the very last minute. Until then leave it empty.
6. Turn the cups over. No water should spill out.



What’s going on?
Slush powder is amazing. That’s because it can turn water solid nearly instantly. The scientific name for slush powder is polysodium acrylate. It is produced by the polymerization of acrylic acid and subsequent hydrolysis of the polyacrylic acid with an aqueous sodium hydroxide solution. (What a mouthful) This is the stuff they put in diapers.


Wizard’s ponderings
Asking the right question is an important part of being creative and solving problems. On the road to asking the right question, we ask other questions that may seem less important. However, every question has its place. Dare to ask silly questions.

Applying this trick in other ways:

What you see may only be a small part of what’s really going on.
When you stop sharing your knowledge it can dry up.
You see the results, but don’t always know how they happened.

Twist - the idea was sparked by something my friend and colleague, Ken Bellemare said to me

Do the trick and then ask people to write down quickly how they think the trick was accompllished. There will be all kinds of ideas; fake cup, sleight of hand, etc. Then ask the group to get into small groups and compare ideas to come up with one idea they can all support.

At this point you can ask them if they need any more information. Likely they will say that they need some thoughts confirmed or denied through a Q and A.

Keypoint: In the beginning I asked you to just jump to an idea. Was it the best idea? Probably not because you didn't have enough information. By joining with others you had a chance to get feedback about your idea and compare it with the thoughts of the group. But the key element missing still for many of you was the opportunity to check out your thoughts via feedback from the person who did the trick.

In the same way, when we come to a decision, it is always easy to jump to a quick conclusion or assumption. But by taking other important steps; comparing our ideas, showing them the light of day and, most importantly, by checking out our ideas, thoughts, conclusions and assumptions we get thenecessary information we need to make right decisions.

How many times have you seen people jump to solutions or conclusions without all the necessary information.