By Vurdlak on January 17, 2010, with 167 Comments
Here’s one that kept me occupied for days: browsing the net for more stuff, I stumbled upon a peculiar item that kept my attention. This particular die changes its colors somehow, and the mirror that goes with it, doesn’t show what it logically should. I tried, and I tried, but I still can’t seem to understand how the darn thing operates!
You can get the scoop of what I’m talking about via images I’ve included, but the real thing can be seen through the video posted below (inside this article). Tried that? Still no luck? Think it would be easier for me to throw in few bucks, and get my hands on it.
Looking at the video below, do you think you can solve the secret? If you can, please be kind and wait some time before you reveal the answer to others (me included).
Let’s repeat the core: it’s a simple idea really, just place an ordinary die on top of a mirror. In real life, the die has black and red spots like any good die should, but in the reflection it has no spots. When you turn the die, and move it around – still no spots. It’s the damnedest thing and supposedly the effect works with no effort on your part. What’s more, when you flip the dice over – suddenly it has no spots in real life, but spots in the mirror-world appear. Crazy I know, but really amazing. Can we determine exactly how the mirror achieves this unusual effect? If you’d like, you can purchase this illusory toy from our partner store!
(53 votes)
a_snail got the clue, if not the result. There are three dice, one with colors done correctly, one with “half colors”, and one with no colors. The die with half colors is used to make the illusion with the mirror. This die also has two fives, both fully colored. The two is missing. You will notice at about the 21 second mark in the video, the four is on the left and the one is on the right, and the mirror shows no color. At the 31 second mark, the three is on the left and the one on the right, and mirror is showing colors. Between these two marks, he flipped the die – so there must be two fives.
hmmm… when it showoff there is no ’2′ showed
’5′ always on top
and in the picture… ’4′ and ’1′ seemed reversed
if the dice has color, the number on the side 4,1,3,6 and otherwise 6,3,1,4
and my best theory is there are 3 dices…
first is the all coloured dice, which is top ’5′, the side 4,1,3,6 and the bottom 2, which is shown first time
and the second is the magic dice that can be shown with color or not in such angle, the top is 5 colored, the side is 4,1,3,6 half colored, and the bottom is 5 uncolored, this dice is shown with mirror
and the last is the white dice, top 5, side 6,3,1,4 and the bottom 2
so it’s a spoiler or that’s just my false theory
The spots have something similar to angled “louvres” that are colored on one side but white on the other. This is how the refelction sees the opposite of what you see on top.
It isn’t a magic trick, optical illusion, or slight of hand — the die is a Vampire! Be afraid. Be very afraid!
I think there are two dice and a semi transparent mirror. Each dice has a magnet in it so that the two are held together on each side of the mirror.
It’s 1 die with the inside bottom facing side of the holes painted.The colored half of the holes are only visible as the reflection when viewed from above.When the die is flipped upsidedown then the white inside half is visible.
ps. …. theres several doubles of specific numbers…example “5″…some fully white and some fully black inside.
I think i have a reasonable idea of how it is done. One die only.
If you look at the still image, the holes are cavities with one vertical half paited black and other left white. Therefore from the top it appears black, but the mirror shows the underside that is white.
PS watch how you spins it around on top of the glass, but is careful never to turn over?
sorry to spoil the sales for your partner store, Vurdlak.
PPS. love the site.
what ever it is its cool anyway
2 dice. One that has deep dots, and can be painted or not painted on the opposite sides of the inside of the dots. So reflected, leaves an illusion that the color is not reflected. And then of course, he trades the die at the end for the other die that has no color in the dots at all.
The mirror is probably a magnet! The dice probably have the same reaction a screen does when it comes in contact with the magnet. It sounds less thought thru I know, but that’s my idea.
it appears to me that the die has the “5″ painted on 1 side and a “5″ not painted on the opposite side . the dimples for the other numbers are 1/2 painted such that the angle of the view shows no color and the reflected view show the color.
Oh! Very interest optical effect!
In Russian: Очень интересный оптический эффект!
Thanks!
There are two dice(one colored dots and all-white), one on top of the other.
See the last part before the guy lifts the die (0:40 of the clip). He seem to have dropped the other die before lifting it off the mirror.
Lu Chen didn’t do the trick good. He revealed two dice in the end. This can cause the secret to reveal more easily.
It’s a 2-way mirror and 2 dice with magnets to hold them together through the mirror. So it’s not a reflection you’re seeing but the other die through the glass.
The rest is slight of hand.
Time to spoil the trick.Only PHOENIX is right.There is only one dice with holes half painted.SIMPLE…
…AND 2 FIVES.one fully painted and one not painted….
fun… thunder is completely wrong, Pika is dead on, semi transparent mirror and magnets for the WIN :P.
youtube solves the problems your brain has in putting two and two together… the solution is there…
I like the illusional mirror, gonna have to see what else can be done with it :D.
well… at least the one I seen on youtube was done that way >.>… the person there claims to be using this set.
i believe thunder
look at the image
the one on the right, below the video
look CAREFULLY
see the white parts where the holes are?
its half painted
its there both on 1 and 4, red and black
the mirror is just a normal mirror
it is just 2 dice on top of each other. 1 with color, and the other without color.
See, I believe this has something to do with the concave nature of the insets on the dice. The inside ring isn’t painted; perhaps, when viewed at a certain angle, the viewer only sees the white part as reflected by the mirror.
My guess: A half transparent mirror and very, very cunning sleight of hand. The reflection is darker than usual, there is a hint of the carpet or whatever it is on the right hand side image. And you dont’s see the index finger of the left hand of the “magician”.
Works remarkably genuine and sometimes confusing
This isn’t an OPTICAL illusion it’s a MAGIC illusion. If you try this with a normal die and mirror it doesn’t work.
This is VERY misleading and I’m now quite skeptical of this whole site.
Xsper has it right.
There are three dice:
– one fully painted that is shown at the beginning.
– one where only half of the pips are painted. (this die also has two fives on it)
– one that is not painted at all that is shown at the end.
some sleight-of-hand switching, and voila!
Um, no, there’s only one die.
Just like Grausch said: It’s an ordinary mirror, but a special die. It has two fives opposite each other, one black, one white. The pips on the sides are all half painted, and the holes are set especially deep so the mirror won’t pick up the inside faces. If you enlarge the picture and look very closely, you can see the half painted pips (this is most obvious on the red pip in both pics).
In the video he does use sleight of hand to show us two unaltered dice.
its not an optical illusion, its just a trick
it’s still an optical illusion with the half painted pips
but there are definitely 3 dice. Graucsh FTW
Why would James think there is only one die? He obviously knows very little or nothing about basic sleight of hand. This is a very old principle.
“It’s the damnedest thing and supposedly the effect works with no effort on your part.”
If that’s the case, it’s one die and no sleight of hand required. I first thought partially painted pips, but in the video there is plenty of angles shown with the blank die to convince me otherwise. At least of the 1,5,3,4 sides. Considering that this is coming from think geek and the funky way he pulls it off the mirror I suspect some technology and possibly magnets.
Hmm.
If the dice has two ones, two fours and two fives, you can do it with a real life mirror.
One set of 1-4-5 fully colored. One half.
Two dices, one painted, one blank, magnets inside, ordinary mirror, one dice over the other, rotate it left to right or vice versa, turn it around, upside down, you got the painted down the blank on top, and with the right angle of the camera ….bang…you got it.
But I guess it only works with a cam. In real life it ‘d be (I believe) imposible to do it.
nice trick though….I like it
i think he has a megnatised dice and a thin mirror so you can see through the mirror and when he picks it up he makes sure not to let the camera see that he flips the mirror and thus switching the die and looks like you’ve changed the die, and the first die is coloured and the second one is colourless
Great trick! The only way I can try to explain it is if both dice are magnetized, but both are ON TOP of the mirror. Some “tuned” internal reflection must fool us with weird reflection angles. Check that the mirror is always shown to us at the same angle (not the angle that the plane of the mirror makes with the table, as that one does vary, I refer to the orientation of the mirror in its own plane)
It’s easy to see that the four and one side’s pips are actually cylindrical holes with only one half painted. There are at least two sides with 5, one painted black and one unpainted.
In the bottom-right painting you can see that the unpainted sides of the holes are visible at the edges, making the pips look slightly deformed.
Graucsh is completely right about how many dices the magician uses and he also reveals himself if you pay full attention to the second number 42.
You see him grab the dice with the middle finger while at same time you see a slim reflection of the “not painted” dice held by the index finger.
Right, as Graucsh and Xsper said, there are three dices:
– one fully painted that is shown at the beginning.
– one where only half of the pips are painted. (this die also has two fives on it)
– one that is not painted at all that is shown at the end.
he changes the dices in between …
just before he shows you the die at the end… when he has the die on the mirror, moving it around. Notice he never flips it, just spins it. Also take note of the 3-face just before he shows the unpainted one, you can see half of the dimple is painted. What gave it away for me is the strange way he holds his hand when he is putting down or picking up a the dice, anything other than one finger and a thumb is highly suspicious when it comes to “magic” tricks.
i’m just gonna buy this, to see how it works
Hey if you look you see that when the dark 5 is up the sequence of the sides is 4-1-3-6 that is the 6 is to the right of the 3
When the light 5 is up the sequence is reversed it is 6-3-1-4
at 19 seconds you see the 3 and right of it the 6.
at 41 seconds you see the 3 and right of it the 1.
it’s a special die. Notice in each of the pictures AND vidio (with the exception of when he’s flipping the die around in the beginning) the #5 is always on top. The die used in the demonstration has a 5 both on top and on bottom. One is painted black, the other painted white. The rest of the numbers are half painted. Notice in the picture on the bottom right (with the carpet), see the divits in the 4 on the left hand side, you kind of see white inside the divit. Same for the number 1, if you look at the rigt side of the divit, you can see some white. The mirror is normal, the die is not. I suspect the first die in the video was replaced with the special one after it was flipped around.
I think that the dice pips are half painted and when the dice switches from being painted to not being painted it is because the guy switches the dice.
the die have not changed, only your viewpoint. you are looking down on the real world object, but up in the reflected image. change your viewpoint to prove this correct. lift up the real world object and look up at it. you will see the same image as the reflection. doh
There are two fives. One white and one black, on opposite sides. At 38 seconds, if you pause it just right, the guy tips the die a little by accident and you can see the reflection of the bottom (which is a black five). The rest is just concave illusion, half painted black half white. But a clever trick nonetheless!
Haha this is soo easy, the holes are filled only 50% so when you look from the top they seem coloured but the other part is reflected in the mirror which is not coloured and vise versa :)
This is a simple magic trick for camera only.
Equipment needed: 1 x mirror, only slightly silvered, 1 x black spotted die with a magnet inside, 1 x white spotted die with magnet inside and with the white spots mirror-imaged to the first die.
There is always one die above and one die below the glass. You simply need a little dexterity to slide them on simultaneously. The apparent reflection you see is actually the other die under the ‘mirror’. The magnets inside the two dice keep them aligned when you twist the top one. (Note only twisting works: you never see the two separated from the glass as the bottom die would fall!) You slide them off together and slide them on together reversed for the second part of the illusion.
Proof that they are two different dice: Look at the positioning of the 6 and the 3 when they are on top or being rotated in the fingers. On the black spotted die, moving from the the 6 to the 3, the 3 diagonal goes from left to right. Look at the white spotted die and, moving from the the 6 to the 3, you’ll see the 3 diagonal goes from right to left instead. Two dice!
whateva dis geek used the trick, it was rlly worth watchin………..
I wish somebody would tell us the truth…lol, can we contact Magician himself? …but magicians don’t reveal their secrets, do they? ………………………………………………………………oooh, but this one should have some mercy with us, though on 80% I believe half-painted story with 1 dice
it are 2 dices on each other
every time if he wants to pick it up he first let fall the dice.. it is not half painted
Yeps, I’ve been practising some magic tricking as well and how the guy picks up the dice in the end of the video suggests that he drops the original dice and shows the one that was hidden below nameless and little finger when rotating half painted dice on mirror.
Why it looks like he’s dropping the original is the thing that instead of directly picking up the dice he first pulls the dice to the edge of mirror and after that he raises the dice. (unnecssary incovinient to pick the dice like that… with coins the move would make sense to get better grip).
Between seconds 32-35 he pick up the non-painted dice (in that point he makes a bit longer pause keeping the hand hidden and after that the finger movements seem much more restricted). And two fotos clearly shows that reflected dice is half painted since fotos were taken from wrong angle. Too bad that there was those errors in video.. e.g. dropping half painted dice could have been done by rotating mirror a bit to prevent showing dropping the dice and fotos should have been taken from the same angle that video was taken..
I think it has something to do with the reflection of light.
this is one of the silliest discussions I’ve ever seen. first post gets it exactly right then months of useless discussion.
half painted holes, only sleight of hand is keeping the dice angled down so you can’t see the holes.
20 to 28 dollars (on sale right now) for a die with half painted holes and a small mirror.
I didn’t watch the video, but it’s probably magnets. The mirror must contain a magnet, and the dots inside the dice are probably magnetic too, so they get out when they react with the mirror or something..
38″
It’s a double sided mirror just to tell you
Watch closely – you do not see a side with 2 on it. This means there is two sides with the same number. In this case, there is two sides with 5 dots, on opposite faces, one side with all black dots, and the otherside all white dots. This allows the indented dots on the remaining four faces, 1,3,4 and 6, to be coloured in a way that creates the illusion when viewed in a mirror… In conclusion, this dice has 3 dots more than a regular dice should!
Sorry to Michelle and Bruce, just noticed you two had both posted the same observations as me, ie. there are two sides with 5 dots, one white, one black. All this talk of half-transparent mirrors and magnetic dice is laughable!
Obviously, sleight of hand with two ‘special’ die which interact with the mirror. One die with the visible notches are filtered as blank in the mirror while the white die which was switched at 29/30 sec mark has some type of material to reflect this color via the mirror. Nothing special here. Thanks for the brief entertainment.
it’s called the hand switch… no trick other than his two fingers. I can’t understand how the half painted would ever really work, especially when colors reflect so a hint of red would most likely show. All he’s doing is slight of hand. Nicely fooled the lot of you though. Well done.
i am not 100 sure, but i guess the mirror has a coating of polarizer and the dice is prepared, so the reflection (via polarizer) only shows blackness while the real image has white color.
just an idea…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polarizer
Actually theres no switch of dices, there’s only 1 dice with a black 5, a white 5 and numbers 1,3,4 & 6 half colored. The dimps in every face are deep enough so as to paint only one half of it, leaving the other one clean. If you look in the picture yo can see how the internal part of the dice is painted in one part and not painted in the other.
Actually, there are three dice. The first is fully painted, so he can show it without the un-painted halves showing, the second is, of course, the half painted, and finally the third is all-white, so, again, he can show it without showing the other color. If you watch the clip again, toward the end, you’ll see how he shows the final die’s faces and it doesn’t have the other half.
You’re right! Optical illusions take me a long time, but once I get it, I can’t miss it.
That’s easy…The holes on the dice are only half painted… Cool..
I would agree with shay but there does have to be two dice cause at the end he rolls it around in his hand and no half painted holes which would be visible but not hard to see when the dice is switched
Howdy. I guess there are 2 dice, one gimmiked, one normal. The gimmiked one has one face (5 for instant) black, the opposite (again 5) white and the sides one (1-3-4-6) coloured just in a half of the ring (this you can easy see in the last pitcure, where the ring appears not all coloured). At beginning you show the normal one (full colored) and you “palm” the second one (mean that you hide it in the hand, as you do for coin triks; with a change you put the gimmiked dice on the mirror that show on up spectator the colored face and to the mirror the white. For changing wiews you simply tourn the dice with the white number on top, in this way you simply invert the prospectives.
The dots must be vampire dots! :)
There are 1230 die, one for each frame of sequence, and he uses invisible magic elves… now all you trolls STFU :)
thats the best 1 yet
wtf i cant figure this out…
how duz it work? is it, like edited………..
looks like slight of hand , stoopid , switching with die that has dots on under side , showing mirror in such a bizarre way is tip. If Im correct , that is weak. look how he rotates in only certain direction , lame . Possible Im lame for commenting on such an obvious scam
He actually has 3 Die. One of each color, and one with two die stuck together? The “double die” sits on top of the mirror. The rest is slight of hand.
There are 3 dice
One colored.
Another completely white.
And the last one has two fives and the edge points as follows:
- Half white border
- Half the colored border and
- The center is reflective.
This can be seen in the second picture, it shows a small cut in the color of the points of the faces of the sides.
I guess so
The sides of the die are meant to be looked at from an angle, so that one angle (half the dot) is colored why the opposite angle (the other half in the mirror) is blank. You can see this in the bottom right picture where the reflection has a tent of red in it. As far as the top of the die with 5 dots, there are two sides with 5 on them. One side is colored and the other side is blank. You see this between 37 and 38 seconds when he accidentally lifts up the corner of the die while turning it. When he lifts it up there is a reflection of a colored dot, indicating that the bottom side is colored.
My guess is that the die is not totally normal, rather it is marked with special inks that change colour depending on angle of incident light (ever seen a car that appears to do the same as it drives past you?), and the glass of the mirror has a polarising filter, to transmit light only with a given orientation, like that used in polarising light microscopes, some camera filters, and expensive sunglasses.
One 5 is painted the other is not.The other sides holes are only painted on one side.The mirror reflects only the top of the hole.
@Brian
You are right. I was so plain for me to see.
It is only one die. It has 2 fives,(1 colored and one not), and the holes of the 4 and 1 are only half painted. That is why you can see them white in the mirror and colored in plain sight as well as White in plain sight and colored in the mirror.
You can tell in the right pic (look at the red dot).If the holes were fully painted you would not see slight white in the hole, It would be fully red. Very simple but awesome Illusion.
Regaurding my earlier comment. I reviewed the video again and I think I am wrong it might be more than 1 die. Normally I can tell what illusions are pretty quick but this one stumps me.