The Magical Empty Boxes


You must have seen some of these in a magic show :

    1) A hat (or box) was shown empty to the audiences first, and then the magician pulled some flowers from the empty hat;

    2) A person walked into a box and after a few turning of the box, the person, or part of her disappeared.


Now these are real magic. The "seemingly empty" boxes or hats are built using the characteristics of light and with some help of mirrors. You can follow the instruction below and build one easily on your own!

To Create Your Own Magical Box :

-You need : 1) one (n X n X n ) box with one side open, and
                   2) 1 piece of mirror with dimension of n X [ n * square root of 2 ]

-To construct, just put the mirror in the box diagonally (ie, lean forward 45 degree,) facing the opening side. And you can place any object in the space behind the mirror without being seen. The mirror would reflect the bottom of the box (AB) and the reflected image of AB would be as the back of the box to the viewers. Therefore, when you thought you could see the back of the box (ie, AC) what you see is actually the reflection of the bottom of the box. Thus the box would seem empty to you.

Diagram #3