Disappearing art - a magic trick or just science? | Hey Ray!

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - Over the years, we have shown you how some things that appear to be a magic trick are actually physics or math. Today, we are going to show you another one of those apparent magic tricks.  Many of the tricks we showed you have to deal with bending light. That bending light seemed to make things invisible or disappear. We are going to show this to you in a different way.

To do this, all you need are some markers, a piece of paper, a sandwich bag and a bowl of water. All things you probably have available in your home.

Draw something on the piece of paper and use a bunch of colors. I drew a colorful lightning bolt.  Like me, you do not need to be a good artist for this experiment to work.

When your masterpiece is finished. Put it in the sandwich bag and dip it in the water. When you dip the bag in the water, your picture disappears!

Make sure you view this from above because if you don't, this experiment won't work.

The whole reason we see colors and objects is because light bounces off the object and we see it. Light acts differently when it travels through different substances like air, water, or even the sandwich bag.

Both the water and the sandwich bag are clear, but they are two different things the light is passing through. This bends or refracts the light that bounces off of the picture, making it disappear.

Now, if you draw on the bag itself, that light will still bounce back to your eyes, since the light is not traveling through the sandwich bag as well. Drawing on the bag adds an extra element to this science experiment that is disguised as a trick because it keeps an outline of your artwork, but all the colors disappear.

Look at this picture of a person with a beard.  When dipped in water, the beard disappears. That happens because there is an outline of the head and eyes on the outside of the bag.

The beard on the inside of the sandwich bag is refracted,  making it disappear.  This happens while the head shape on the outside of the bag can still be seen.

Just like magic!