An Analysis of the Concepts of Physics and Science in General in Movies

NOW YOU SEE ME AND NOW YOU SEE ME 2

A. Stealing the Safe from a Warehouse Trick

At the end part of the first movie, after the apparent death of Jack Wilder, the FBI discovered that the
Horsemen were going to steal a safe from a top secret warehouse. They went to the warehouse only to find out
that the safe was already gone. However they were able to spot it in a delivery truck which they chased because
they believed that it would lead them to the Horsemen. Later on, the FBI got to open up the safe and voila! It
was full of balloon animals. After a few other events, the actual money in the safe winded up in the car of
Thaddeus and the FBI arrested him because they think that he was the one who really robbed the safe.

What really happened in the warehouse is that the safe was still in their when the FBI agents arrived.
The horsemen set up a huge mirror in the room to cover the safe. They angled it in such a way that the reflected
light waves by the mirror will create an image that makes it seem like it is connected or is a part of the
surrounding and that there is no mirror in the line of sight. The eyes then are deceived that the room is empty,
no safe or mirror.

B. The Magic Fight

There is a scene in Jack Wilder and Dylan Rhodes were fighting and Jack combats Dylan by throwing
cards at him which caused cuts. Card throwing can actually hurt people. This is in line with the topic of motion
in physics. With the right angle and precision of aim and with the right amount of force, the card spins with the
acceleration that can cause cuts in the target, whether it is a thing or a person. This is associated to Newton’s
second law of motion which states that the acceleration of an object as produced by a net force is directly
proportional to the magnitude of the net force, in the same direction as the net force, and inversely proportional
to the mass of the object.

C. Making the Rain Stop

In the sequel of the movie, before the final show of the Horsemen, Daniel Atlas performed a show where
in he made rain stop. He even made it go up and go to different directions. It is a clever optical illusion created
using light. In the movie, Daniel used rain machines and strobe lights. Strobe lights emit quick pulses of light.
In real life when this illusion is made, all the water drops are actually falling and they become visible during the
millisecond pulses of the strobe light. By adjusting the pulses to the rate of the falling drops, the drops are made
to look like they stopped in midair, and are moving in slow motion. For instance, when you see the drops
floating still, the drop is not the same; the light frequency is synchronized with that of the falling drops, so that
every time the light is on it shows you the image of a different drop at the same position. The mind connects the
images illuminated by the pulses, likes frames of an animated cartoon, creating the illusion of gravity-defying
motion. What you perceive as a rising drop of water is actually frames of many different falling drops.

D. The Piranha Tank

In the beginning of the movie, there was an act by Henley Reeves where she was handcuffed and
chained then placed inside a tank full of water. The goal was to escape before the tank full of piranhas above her
was poured. She was able to remove the handcuffs but the chains on her feet got stuck. She was able to free it
at the last minute then she swam to the top of the tank to escape but it was too late. The audience thought she
was not able to escape and was eaten by piranhas but she later on appeared in the crowd of audience. The
physics involved in this scenario is not really in the magic trick but rather in the tank full of water. Henley sunk
when placed in the water because she has a high density in relation with the tank. Density is a measurement that
compares the mass of an object has to a volume. An object with much matter in a certain volume has
high density. And when she tried to swim, there is buoyancy. It is an upward force exerted by a fluid that
opposes the weight of an immersed object. As she floated, her weight pressed down into the water; the water
pressed back, pushing her up to the top of the tank.

E. Conclusion

Physics can be found everywhere in our daily lives, we just have to pay close attention to notice it. It can
be very fun like how we can use it to create illusions and the so-called “magic”. It can be ironic how one can
make his magic trick look like he is defying the law of physics and science using actually the concepts in
physics. Science tries to explain the phenomena happening around us in order to understand why things happen
the way they do. It is interesting to note that even in magic, when the impossible things that go against the
natural world are made possible, science is still involved.