By Vurdlak on May 6, 2007, with 190 Comments
Jason Mayoff, Zachary Burgeson and Eric Cole liked this video so much that all of them un-connectedly submitted it for me to publish on Mighty Optical Illusions homepage. I am really puzzled with this one. I browsed the web for explanation, and almost everywhere people said that the fluid this guy is purring is just an ordinary water. I wouldn’t bet my allowance on it.
Allrighty then, I’ll let you smart-asses figure this one for yourselves, since I really don’t have a clue. Can we solve it together? In the past, I believe we managed to solve every single puzzle on this website. I hope that the tradition won’t be stopped today. This is more of a magic trick than optical illusion, but when we solve it, maybe I’ll change my statement. For more illusionary videos, be sure to jump to our videos section. Now employ your gray brain cells, and start thinking!
(36 votes)
When he poors the ‘first run’ you can see that there’s already some water in the ‘empty’ glasses.
because the fluid he poors is white and goes te the bottom, it seems like thats the first thing to go in..
Sweet Clip, I have no freakin clue how he did that… Was there a Liquid already in the Glasses? And that maybe the White liquid then mixes with it, and makes it look like it was empty before hand? I dunno, I’m clueless.
It seems obvious to me…
Each glass already has some water in it. Because the milk/white fluid is significantly heavier than the water, it sinks straight to the bottom, giving the illusion that the glass is empty. The textured glass hides the water well, but if you look carefully, you can see the water when the milk is first poured in.
looks like some sort of mixture that goes fizzy when poured, take a look at how white the first glass is and after he’s poured it theres a white gloop in the bottom…………
There already appears to be water in each successive glass so as he pour the total volume of “milk” increases. As for the milk not immediately spreading out through the water and/or on top of it, the milk solution is initially denser than the water in each of the glasses so it goes straight to the bottom of the glass as it would without another fluid already in the glass. Milk being a colloidal solution is comprised of very tiny particles so it also mixes quite easy, i.e. no separation of layer. Furthermore, you can see when that he redistributes the milk that is diluted.
there’s a little bit of water in each of these glasses, that’s why they have this surface to not see this, but you can see, when the gye starts to fill the next glass…
the “water” at the beginning also is more white than the water in the biggest glass, because of the water given to in each glass…
that’s all;-) really simple
greetz Franz
Each glass has a little water in the bottom to fill out the white stuff. you can see it getting weaker with each glass. bit rubbish really
Great trick!
It is really clever! But you can notice that 2nd and 3rd glasses have a tiny amount of water in them (and so probably the last one) – it is difficult to see as glasses are faceted and the white liquid is much heavier than water and when purred goes strait to the bottom of the glass. Also as the liquid gets purred out it turns from solid white color to half grey. Moreover, you can notice that when she is purring the 2nd glass to the 3rd by the end she shakes it – sort of mixes this liquid with the water that makes it expand in volume. So I think the trick is in the composition of this white liquid and its cool properties. First comment ! =) Great website, btw!
all those glasses, except for the first, have well placed spacers in them. during the first pouring round the liquid is poured into the foremost compartment of each glass, and during the second into another compartment. you’ll just need to be very precise when dividing glasses into compartments. that’s the trick i guess…
it seems the fluid is much more viscose at the beginning then in the end. it is white when he takes the first glass and more translucent when he takes the last one. somewhoe he mixed the fulid with water or something like that. but i dont know how
Just a guess, but I reckon the glasses are divided into 2. the front section is empty and the rear already full. When the guy purs the contents of the previous glass into the front section, it looks like it’s filling the whole glass up.
No comments yet?? whooohoo im the first. anyway, well come on how is it done?
****SPOILERS**** DO NOT READ IF YOU’D RATHER BE MYSTIFIED!!
Inside each glass (except for the first one) is a clear tube containing clear water, the amount being equal to the previous glass volume. As glass #2 finishes being emptied into glass #3, you can clearly see this tube in the glass. As the 4 glasses are refilled from the large one, notice that he only pours against the edge of the glass, and only up to the top of the tube, ensuring that by the end of the trick there will be no liquid in the tubes… leaving enough to fill the glasses.
Also notice how initially, the liquid is very murky, with sludge in the bottom of it. As the “hidden” water is introduced with each pour, the white liquid becomes more diluted and by the end of the trick, it is not nearly as cloudy.
The white liquid could be yeast-based (which may give this white color) or made of baking powder, but it’s just a guess. I am not sure whether it would give such effect, but I think you got the idea.
haha funny trick, but its obious that glasses are filled with water, you can see it when he reach tha biggest glass. White color is pale and u can se the mix of water.
If you watch it closely you can see that the milk gets watered down as the trick happens. This is because there is already water in the glasses at the start of the trick. If you look closely at any magic trick you can usually spot the secret.
Hello,
This is very easy trick to preform.
The following glasses have all a bit of water, since the glass isn’t flat the water dissimulates very well. The first glass has water with something mixed (flower maybe???) but if you look closely you’ll see that when he start to pour in the glass it fills the start very rapidly.
Thta’s so cool!
Each glass has a inner glass., when pouring into the next size up of glass, he pourse some in the outher glass and some in the inner glass. when going from the big glass to all the others he only pors into the outer glass.
The glasses have water in them to begin with.
i’m thinking that there is some liquid in there that mixes with the milk (at least, i think it’s milk)
if you look closely you can see the water move in the last glass before he puts the milk in. Plus the milk is clearly diluted. this is a bad trick.
The water theory cannot be proven until u look closely at the colour of the milk as it is poured into each glass. It gets more and more grey from what was first clearly bright white.
doesnt it use some effervescent which makes the water fizz, so take up more of the volume of the glasses each time
Nah… I don’t think its the water trick. Cause you see the white fluid spilling into the last glass very clearly, it wouldn’t look like that even through the glass texture. You can see a single stream bouncing off from the bottom of the glass, that wouldn’t happen in water. At least I think so… awesome trick!
i agree it probably had water in the bottom and the glasses had thicker wall of glass as the got taller
Isn’t it funny to see how many people can’t spell ‘pour’.
Seems to be some sort of chemical reaction. there is probably some sort of powder at the bottom of each glass that reacts with the water (or whatever else is in the first glass) to expand just enough to fill the next glass. you can see that the liquid foams just a bit as he pours into the next glass.
LOL by the time hes finished it lookes like they r full of skeet
The glasses could be made or contain ice on the inside if the are glass. if it’s clear ice without any air bubbles then it will look like ordinary glass. The ‘white’ substance could be a type of salt that disolves the ice at a certain rate, hence producing more water with each transfer.
there was already liquid in the “empty” glasses. in the first glass the liquid was more white but in the last glass the liquid had turned more clear.
I only looked at this once but it appears that each glass has a divider to make it smaller. The last largest glass is poured off camera so more water is poured in the last shot to fill the glass.
Bill
Hi! My name is Fazzio and I´m a professional magician from Brazil.
This is a magic trick that dont involve optical illusions. There aren´t water in glasses previously too.
How it´s done?
Do you wanna really know?
Okay…
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SPOILER
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COULD YOU KEEP A SECRET?
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ME TOO! ;-)
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A MAGICIAN NEVER TELL THE SECRETS!
My guess is that it’s a mixture of baking soda and white vinegar. (It’s good for cleaning drains, corrosion, etc.) When combined they create a sort of fizzy liquid that expands quickly until it “fizzes out” (stabilizes?)and becomes a pale liquid. Kinda a Mentos/Coke effect. I imagine the “trick” to this illusion is the timing. If he were to just let it stay in one glass, it would fizz over.
it is quite obvious. there is a small glass column in the center of each glass. the column occupies just enough volume in each glass for the same amount of liqued to top off each glass. it is most apperent when he shakes the second glass clean.
-jimmy
dude, what a fake.. there’s water in the glasses. watch it again, and watch the bottom where the water goes… SO FAKE.
At 36 secs when he hits the big glass it does look like there is already liquid inside the glass HOWEVER water being in the glasses prior to this only explains one part of the trick.
That doesn’t explain how he empties the big one into the rest. Cause the first one beside the big glass should have emptied more than half easily. Maybe there is another container inside the glasses
yep, i devo agree with John_Doe and Zoe – u can tell that there is actually already water in each glass – in the biggest glass, the water actually moves slightly before he pours the milk in. that help, Vurdlak?
is it just me, or does anyone else see something “thick” or “chunky” fall from the second glass into the third glass.
There is a clear column in the center of each glass as already posted. Watch closely as the last glass is filled. Towards the end of the pouring, he accidently pours some of the liquid into the center column and you can see the spill over.
You can get this trick from any good magic store. I remember seeing them sold over twenty years ago!
yea there was already water in it
If you watch the last glass when it is moved you can see the surface tension of the water move a little. Therefore there is water in the glasses.
guys its not a ‘guy’ its a ‘girl’ thats pouring the liquid in the glass. but anyways i didn’t get the trick until i saw it for the sacond time. the liquid looks nasty, specialy when i think its milk uhhh groooss!
all you say thers some water already, i believe youre wrong. it doesnt make sense when he pours it in all the glasses because he pours all the water out of every glass every time. i think its probably somthin to do with realtive size.
apparently the glasses are not glass at all, but merely plastic double or even triple wall with openings to fill the differnt walls.
I agree with just about everyone else here.
It does look like there is already water in the cups before they pour the milk in.
But there doesn’t seem to be any divider in the middle of the cups.
The milk seems to be getting weaker and weaker as it goes from one cup to another.
And when the milk gets poured into each cup, it seems to be a little ‘cloudy’ at the bottom of the cups for a moment, thats because the milk mixes in with the water and the milk seems ‘cloudy’ when it starts mixing in.
That is probably why they chose to use cups with that pattern on the outside, to hide the fact that the milk is mixing in with the water.
Also, if there was a divider in the middle of the cups, then how would the volume of milk/water increase to fill all the cups in the end?
Thats the only possible explanation I can find.
I wonder if the liquid is Ouzo it starts out clear but turns white/milky when is makes contact with water, you drink it with a 1:1 ratio of water and Ouzo. Good stuff, such a waste!
There is a solide cylinder at the center of each glass, that takes the extra space. This cylinder is made of ice, which melts rapidely, because the liquide is HOT !
Are you people really not looking?? When he goes from small to large he/she purs in the FRONT of the empty glass. When he/she pours from the large glass to fill the smaller ones, he/she pours in the BACK of the empty glass. There is no water, it is not more dilluted. Stop saying that you can see things that you can’t and look at what you can see (pouring in the FRONT and REAR of the empty glases). The glass is partitioned!!
EWWW! I’d hate to drink that “milk” after it went through that trick.
You can totally tell that there is water in the larger glasses. The milk starts to get watered down and by the end of the “trick” the “milk” is more off white/grey than the white that it was at the beginning.
look at seconds 42-45.
Watch for the splash.
Ya this was a featured video on Youtube a few days ago. I said to myself, maybe I should submit it to moillusions! But I realized that in no time at all you would have it on. Oh well, ya, everyone is right about there already being water in the glasses!
P.S. thank’s for taking away all that “first post” stuff it was getting anoying!
The last glass has 1/4 the volume of the first???
i no how he did it he had special powder stuff in each glass and when he poured the water in it fizzed up so he made it look like he was doing magic!!!haha i bet u
Option 1. Water in glasses.
There is no water already in the glasses. Check the reflections in the glasses. BUSTED
Option 2. Special made barriers
If there are barriers, you have to turn 180 degrees. This is not happening. BUSTED
Option 3. This is a videotrick.
Watch the blurs on the “empty” space, when the glasses a lifted. After the glass is replaced, it moves in the next shot without touching it. obviously it is a videotrick. In space of the blur, theres is an extra reservoir placed to add extra liquid. PROBLEM SOLVED.
Going back to the first comment, there is some water in the ‘empty’ glasses, and if you pay attention you will see that the fluid getts clearer towards the end vs at the begining it looked like milk
This is so easy it is ridiculous.
Note a few things:
First, the glasses are not see through.
Second, there’s so much spillage.
Third, until just the last second or two, the previous glass is pouring just at the edge of the next glass. When it is finally poured towards the center, notice how quick it fills up.
The logical and only conclusion, there is an object in the center of the glass. This mandates pouring between this object and the side of the glass. (Of course it only goes 3/4 way up which enables normal pouring the last second or so)
This explains the spillage and everything else. Watch it again- you’ll see.
if you check at 00:16 or 00:17, you can clearly see the tube in the second glass. and between 00:33 and 00:34, check out the reflection of his arm and you can see the tube in the largest glass. it’s kinda easy to see the tubes once you know they’re there.
Hot water and a column of ice in the middle of the glasses….
Yer, go ribbed! That it! he’s got it
Can you see on the second go, how carefully he fills the bigger ones, but then at the last one, he just chucks it in with one hand, this is cos, like ribbeed sais, he doesn’t get any liquid in the middle, but in the little one, there’s no tube in the middle.
There is NO tube in the glasses, but there IS some water in the glasses. The solution in the first glass is water and Sodium Polyacrylate Crystals (The absorbant material found in disposable diapers). There needs to be some water in each glass (which is somewhat hidden by the textured glass – you are not supposed to see it) because when he pours the solution into each larger glass, the polymer absorbs the water and swells, creating a gel, thus making it look like there is more solution in each larger glass. Nice illusion.
I agree with texas roadhouse …most definatly…
cheater he put water in the glasses
:(
It is nothing to do with water already in the glasses… each glass is designed like a glass-inside-a-glass… When he intially fills the glasses working upwards, notice how he very carefully pours very near to the edge/rim – this means the liquid goes on the *outside* of the ‘inner’ glass – i.e. it is in a very small space between the outer and inner glasses – this fills quickly. The funny pattern on the glasses hides this.
If you look pause it at the right moment, you can see the milk going into the water and it looks very dilute. You have to pause it just right though,
I think there was water in the cups, that added to the white stuff, and that’s why it got clearer.
This is what happens. it has a small amount of powder called water gell. its found in diapers if u want to try the trick.when u pour liquid onto it it expand making it seem like theres more milk.
magician’s double walled trick glasses, you just pour the liquid into the inner rim and it looks like its full. if you filmed from the top it would look mostly empty
There are clear cylinders in the glasses. You can see him specifically pour the substance close to the edge of the glass to avoid hitting the cylinder in the middle (which would expose the fact that they existed). However, he gets sloppy towards the end and with the final glass he hits the cylinder.
The idea behind the cylinder of course, is that the cylinder takes up space and therefore the glass holds less around the outside of the cylinder (which is where he pours it).
I definitely agree with Ribbed’s conclusion #14, as well as a few others. If you look really closely, there are a few close.
As Ribbed mentioned, at the end of pour #2, you can barely makout a cylinder inside the glass.
Also, at the very beginning of pour #3, watch very closely the bottom of glass #4 – you can see the liquid swirl around something, as if it was a toilet bowl. Yes, I realize simple physics can be causing it, but it seems a bit more exaggerated or pronounced than it would if nothing was there.
Also, at the end of some of the pours, you get the impression that more liquid is coming out that you would think. At first, I though this was clever editing. This most obvious at the end of pour 2 and 3. Oh my, where did all that extra liquid come from?
two people are pouring liquid
you just don’t see the other person.
They are pouring above him, you really can see this when they get to the big glass when the person that is pouring above him missed the glass and the liquid goes all over table
This is an old trick:
The glasses are semi-opaque, but if you look carefully there is column running up the middle of each glass. The column in each larger glass already contains fluid, thus the reason the person is trying to pour along the edge of the glass when filling. A couple of times, especially in the largest glass, you can see he accidentally hits the column in the center with his pour and it splashes off of it.
Using a milky substance to begin with keeps the water from magnifying the column in the middle.
That is all there is to it.
Frank is indeed correct. By putting in a very small amount of Sodium Polycarbinate at the bottom of each glass, he can keep the water semi-soluble. That’s why the “milk” seems to get thicker with each successive glass.
Here’s what happens when you use a larger amount: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWaivm9XpNg
Water….
There may be a set of cones inside the cups. So when he pours it in the cups first he’s using the inside cone which uses more fluid. On the pour back from the biggest cup he’s pouring it on the outside cone which would have less space allowing the fluid to fill all the cups. That’s my guess
I think the first one was milk, and the biggest one was full of water. Each cup in between has a divider somewhere, so he isn’t really filling up the whole cup, just a fraction or side of one. The final one has water in it, which is why it gets so diluted at the end.
Another thing could be that he mixed water with white soap that formed very small bubbles, not noticable by the camera. That would also explane why it would get clearer with each pour, and that there were bubbles at the top.
Want to know what it really is, Copy/Paste this link
http://web.mac.com/gmanx/MOillusions_Private/Milk.html
if you look at the very end right when he’s pouring into the last cup you can see that there’s nothing in the cup…..well done mate well done.