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Spoon bending, how's it done?

Lusikka said:
Sunstealer, thank you for your to the point questions. It is nice to discuss with a metallurgist understanding the importance of metallurgical evidence. I'll try to elaborate the questions as soon as I can.

He did not measure it at all because the softening was so obvious. He took a stainless steel spoon from Geller and bent it to and fro between both hands. He writes (p.16): "I could sense the plasticity myself, by gently moving my hands. It was as though the bent part of the spoon was as soft as chewing gum, and yet its appearance was normal."

Then he thought it would be best to save the spoon without breaking and put it gently on the table. He continues: "… but on attempting to move it I was unable to prevent it from falling apart, a 'neck' having developed."
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Hasted bending the spoon himself was a big no-no. Whilst his physical bending could possibly be observed on the fracture surface if it was of greater magnitude to that of Gellers', it would be better to open the crack fully, in one movement, so as to determine the difference. As a side note, I've had to prevent many engineers from trying to fit together two parts of a (failed) component back together because they don't understand that by doing so they can damage the fracture surface and therefore remove clues as to how the component failed.

With respect I don't see how he can "sense" plasticity. This sounds to me as if the spoon had undergone fracture through work-hardening, but the crack had not propagated fully through the thinnest part, however, the remaining cross-section was still thick enough to enable the thinnest part of the spoon (the neck?) to physically support the head (bit you eat with) until it was placed on the table. He may not have noticed any indication of fracture on the surface of the spoon, although I find that odd, because necking would be apparent before the spoon was placed on the table.

Lusikka said:
Then he discusses the possibility of the spoon being treated with chemical liquids. What if it had occurred in his mind to try to make an imprint on the spoon, with a soft coin or even with his fingernails? It would be interesting to have the spoon studied with the best modern instruments.
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It would be interesting to examine the spoons and their fracture surfaces using modern instruments. I'm not familiar with chemical softening of austenitic stainless steel.

Lusikka said:
He measured the strain during the bending and gives plotter diagrams of the results.

I recommend you buy the book by Hasted, you can do it from Amazon. Earlier it was possible to read the book in its totality freely online, but I don't know whether it is still there.

There are some problems with the late Hasted. He was a physicist and not a metallurgist, and he was rather gullible. He has done some errors in the book. But he was absolutely sincere and reliable and not a foolish professor at all.
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Thanks for the information. I'll see if I can get it from my library.

Metallurgy and materials science has such great implications for our world, yet I often find that other engineers see it as a bit of an oddity. I still have engineers ask me what I actually do even when I've supplied them with test data for projects they are designing and when I've performed failure analysis on components they have helped design!
 
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Lusikka said:
Then he discusses the possibility of the spoon being treated with chemical liquids. What if it had occurred in his mind to try to make an imprint on the spoon, with a soft coin or even with his fingernails? It would be interesting to have the spoon studied with the best modern instruments.
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This isn't it--don't waste your time. Think low-tech, think misdirection.
 
AdMan said:
Here's how it's done--you bend it when no one's looking.
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And this is why it is difficult to tell metallurgically. What's the difference between applying force physically and force applied via the mind. The two would be indistinguishable unless the claimant could a) do it without touching the material and b) claim that some other mechanism such as heat is aiding the bending. This is why the word "softening" is important because it is measurable using defined criteria.
 
Lusikka said:
There are some problems with the late Hasted. He was a physicist and not a metallurgist, and he was rather gullible. He has done some errors in the book. But he was absolutely sincere and reliable and not a foolish professor at all.
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What has been repeatedly shown is that neither sincerity nor reliability nor their concurrence is sufficient to overcome gullibility. Further, gullibility itself is not required to be fooled; lack of appropriate expertise is sufficient, and Hasted possessed that lack in great quantity.
 
Originally Posted by Lusikka
Hasted also measured strains with strain-gauges in some keys, which a boy bent without touching them. He observed suppression of the elastic part of bending. As it happens I got this confirmed in my experiments. One of the boys was not able to bend a saw blade strip, but the other held it between his hands so that half of the strip was sticking out. We saw the end of the strip turn a little and when the boy gave it to me, the strip had just that bend in the middle. The bending would have been impossible normally because the thin and extremely hard strip would have been bending very much elastically before there would have been noticeable [remaining] bend in the strip.

In an article (C. Crussard, J. Bouvaist (1978): Étude de quelques déformations et transformations apparemment anormales de métaux. Mémoires Scientifiques. Revue Métallurgie - Fevrier 1978) the authors measured work-hardening in a tensile testing bar in the thick end – without visible deformation and totally impossible to get even using strong tools.

J. P. Girard also bent a very strong round bar holding it in one end and rubbing in the middle with fingers of the other hand. The authors even actually saw the bending angle grow during 10-20 seconds. They also measured anomalous increase of hardness in some aluminum strips.
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LTC8K6 said:
How have you eliminated tricks? What you write sounds exactly like the magic tricks that have been done by many people for a long time. How have you eliminated this possibility?
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What on earth are you saying – what a nice skeptical logic! Exactly like magic tricks? Where exactly have you seen magicians measuring with strain-gauges or doing hardness testing? What about very strong test pieces actually seen bending, the angle growing in bare hands, well visible?

How exactly similar are these situations:

A magician has trained his tricks for years, prepared test pieces in advance, controls them all the time, makes it possible to have an opportunity to change the test pieces, does not tell in advance what he will do, does not allow spectators surround himself, does not allow spectators inspect the test pieces any time they wish, and does not allow metallurgists inspect the test pieces with scientific instruments. Naturally there are different situations, but usually these are the rules. At least I have never seen a trick done so that the test piece has been so well visible that it has been possible to see it actually bending.

Young boys were able to do the trick a couple of hours after they had seen it done, had no prior training in magic tricks, used the test pieces I had brought, were all the time told by adults what to do, were surrounded by adults, gave the test pieces for inspection whenever asked, did the trick extremely well visible to everybody, and the test pieces were not concealed and therefore the gradual change of the bending angle could be seen from different directions with absolute clarity.

Would you, please, make your claim of exactness clear more in details?
 
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Garrette said:
What has been repeatedly shown is that neither sincerity nor reliability nor their concurrence is sufficient to overcome gullibility. Further, gullibility itself is not required to be fooled; lack of appropriate expertise is sufficient, and Hasted possessed that lack in great quantity.
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In real life nothing is only black or white. What you have learned from skeptical sources about Hasted is rather strongly twisted in a certain direction. Hasted prevented change of test pieces by precision weighing them and marking them in different ways.
 
Lusikka said:
I recommend you buy the book by Hasted, you can do it from Amazon. Earlier it was possible to read the book in its totality freely online, but I don't know whether it is still there.

There are some problems with the late Hasted. He was a physicist and not a metallurgist, and he was rather gullible. He has done some errors in the book. But he was absolutely sincere and reliable and not a foolish professor at all.
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Is this the book?

http://www.urigeller.com/books/metal-benders/h.htm
 
Emet said:
Is this the book?

http://www.urigeller.com/books/metal-benders/h.htm
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Yes, but only the text part of it. Pictures and mathematical formulas are missing. I think I have seen an online version with pictures, too. I have lost the information when my old computer crashed, or perhaps I did not save the address at all.

At any case everybody has now the possibility to check how gullible Hasted in reality was.
 
Lusikka said:
In real life nothing is only black or white. What you have learned from skeptical sources about Hasted is rather strongly twisted in a certain direction. Hasted prevented change of test pieces by precision weighing them and marking them in different ways.
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You jump to a rather hasty and unsupported conclusion regarding what I know of Hasted, particularly since I have said nothing of him.

In regard to a question of yours to another poster: magicians bend things (spoons, forks, nails, even railroad spikes) so that the bend occurs visibly while the spectator watches. If you are unaware of this then I submit that it is your knowledge that is lacking.

Regarding your comment about strain gauges and other controls, I find it interesting that the bends can occur in the presence of scientists and strain gauges but not in the presence of skeptical and observant magicians.

For all your observations and research and posting, you have presented nothing that indicates any need whatsoever to reconsider the position that spoons get bent when people physically bend them.
 
Garrette said:
In regard to a question of yours to another poster: magicians bend things (spoons, forks, nails, even railroad spikes) so that the bend occurs visibly while the spectator watches. If you are unaware of this then I submit that it is your knowledge that is lacking.
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Please, would you kindly strengthen your claim with some references? It is impossible to evaluate mere claims without knowing their bases.
 
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Garrette said:
You jump to a rather hasty and unsupported conclusion regarding what I know of Hasted, particularly since I have said nothing of him.
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Please, would you kindly give some of your references, and please, say somethin of him.
 
Lusikka said:
Please, would you kindly strengthen your claim with some references? It is impossible to evaluate mere claims without knowing their bases.
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For bending thick nails, a crescent wrench, and even a hammer without trickery using strength, check here. The same clip demonstrates how to cheat while bending a thick nail. If you watch until the end you will see a demonstration of how to drive a nail through a board with just your hand, but that’s just a trick, though it is left unexplained.

For another demonstration of driving a nail into a board with your hand watch this clip with Guy Bavli (a fairly amazing showman and magician).

For a clip of spoon and fork bending far more impressive than anything Geller did, check Richard Osterlind here. Osterlind is the one who bends what I called railroad spikes, though in truth they’re not really railroad spikes. Instead, they are 10 or 12 inch nail spikes like you see here. I can’t give you a link to a video; I simply have it on an instructional DVD I have. The spikes are real; you can buy your own at the hardware store, and the audience inspects them. The spike can even be made to bend, be inspected by the audience, then be made to bend more.


Banachek’s fork bending is a thing of beauty, and he can do it with borrowed cutlery in front of your eyes. To my mind, his metal bending far surpasses any other in elegance, artistry, and—if he had chosen to claim it is “real”—believability, though I’m afraid I can’t give you a link to it; again, I simply have his instructional DVDs.


Somewhat different but in the same vein is a David Berglas effect he performed on British television on Christmas Day 1985 in the inaugural episode of his series “The Mind of David Berglas.” He presented a length of chain—legitimate chain requiring far more strength than any human possesses to bend or break it—had it looked at and held by six members of the audience (none of them in on the act). One of the audience members chose one link of the chain out of any of the possible links. Berglas held that link in his hand while the ends of the chain were held by the volunteers. Upon opening his hand the chosen link of the chain was revealed to be broken.

The point of all this is that the mere fact of a few scientists claiming to have no explanation for an effect that can be and has been duplicated by magicians is no basis to assume anything out of the ordinary is happening.
 
So the jury is still out on whether it's all a trick - like so many similar known and demonstrated tricks - or a genuine example of totally revolutionary physics that breaks well-established physical law and has no known or remotely plausible mechanism?

Hmm, tricky one...
 
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It's a bit like crop circles.

Yes, yes, of course all those others may have been man-made, but there is some scientist in an unrelated field over here who wrote some things in an obscure journal about how some aspects of crops that have nothing to do with actually creating the designs might possibly have shown some anomalies. Therefore aliens.
 
I always wondered why, if people can bend spoons and things with the power of their minds alone, why they needed to touch the spoon at all? Surely their amazing mind powers should work whether they held the spoon in their hand or not. Alternately, if their special "powers" require physical contact with the spoon, why can't they hold it between their toes, or trap it in their armpit between their arm and their torso? This is a question that has never been answered (Unless you're willing to accept "It's a trick" or "Because they're cheating" as an answer).
 
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