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I finally figured out Penn & Teller's bullet illusion...

I wonder if they bother putting marks on the tip of the fake bullets. After the participants sign the tips of the real bullets, they keep their fingers over the tips of the bullets. But they do have to move the bullets around very close to people.

They only offer three colors. So they could have three fake bullets in their pockets that have some random markings for each color. When they do the switch, they can pull the fake bullet with the correct color. They keep their fingers over the tip, but if it slips a bit and someone gets a close look they would at least see the correct color and not be able to see enough to see the exact marks.

If they did that, they could hold up the bullet in full view of the audience where the people in front could see the color on the tip but not clear enough to make out the exact marks. They could even give a quick flash of the tip as they put it into the chamber so that the participant could see that the bullet has their first color on it.
 
mgidm86 said:
I believe you are correct after seeing it again. It seems dangerous either way.

This is a video shot from a Google Glass by one of the audience volunteers for this illusion. Penn and Teller let him record it. Listen when Penn grabs the stand, you can hear the bullet drop down the tube. He tries to mask it by tapping the glass, which is part of the routine every time, but it didn't quite work. That's how I hear it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTrOBwCUIRk
Click to expand...

Thanks for posting that video.


"Hey, Banachek! When we drop the bullets down the metal tubes, won't the audience hear the very loud and revealing clankety-clank sounds of the bullets as they continually bang up against the sides of the tubes? What do we do about that, huh?"

"Guys, there's nothing to worry about. The insides of the tubes are not like a Pachinko machine. There are no protrusions sticking out from the sides for the bullets to bang into. The insides are perfectly smooth. For the bullets to bang up against the sides hard enough to create an audible clanking noise would require a fairly hefty sideways force not parallel to the force of gravity, a force that simply is not present within the tubes."

"OK, fine. That makes sense. We get that. But eventually the bullets make their way to the base of the stands where they must come in contact with the bottom of the exit chutes. Won't that make a noise?"

"Not really. Well, not the kind of clanking noise you're talking about, anyway. Look carefully at the design of my glass stand. The tube curves from the verticle drop to the exit leg. Have you ever seen one of those water slides that drop a person almost vertically before flattening them out with a long curve? When the person finally hits the curve, they don't "bang" into it and they don't bounce back up into the air. They slide along the curve until they are deposited safely into the deceleration splash pool. Granted, as my bullet scoots along the exit leg, it may produce a slight metal-to-metal scraping sound, but I assure you the audience will not notice this. Keep in mind what Galileo taught us about the time it takes for falling bodies to drop sixteen feet. One second, right? As you can see, the length of my tube is far less than sixteen feet. It's only about four feet tall with no more than a foot and a half of leg length added at the end. The time it will take the bullet to travel the entire length of the tube will be only a small fraction of a second. Schwooom! That bullet has exited the tube before anyone can say, 'I hope no one reveals this twenty five years from now!' The whole process happens within the blink of an eye.

"To allay any lingering fears you may still have, remember I taught you how to misdirect your insertion of the bullets in the tubes by tapping on the glass. That tapping noise will also serve to mask any unforeseen clanking or scraping noises during the quarter-second it takes the bullets to travel through the tubes."

"Steve, you're a genius! Here's a check for a scrillion dollars."


mgidm86, in all honesty, I don't hear what you are hearing. I hear Penn tapping on his glass. I also hear Teller tapping on his glass, off-camera.

The video does reveal something very interesting, though; something I had not noticed before. After the bullets have been fired, Penn's pane of glass is examined up-close. Clearly, there is a jagged bullet hole in the glass. But there are all kinds of splotches all over the rest of the glass, too. What are those? Would anyone care to speculate?
 
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Dumb All Over said:
Thanks for posting that video.


"Hey, Banachek! When we drop the bullets down the metal tubes, won't the audience hear the very loud and revealing clankety-clank sounds of the bullets as they continually bang up against the sides of the tubes? What do we do about that, huh?"

"Guys, there's nothing to worry about. The insides of the tubes are not like a Pachinko machine. There are no protrusions sticking out from the sides for the bullets to bang into. The insides are perfectly smooth. For the bullets to bang up against the sides hard enough to create an audible clanking noise would require a fairly hefty sideways force not parallel to the force of gravity, a force that simply is not present within the tubes."

"OK, fine. That makes sense. We get that. But eventually the bullets make their way to the base of the stands where they must come in contact with the bottom of the exit chutes. Won't that make a noise?"

"Not really. Well, not the kind of clanking noise you're talking about, anyway. Look carefully at the design of my glass stand. The tube curves from the verticle drop to the exit leg. Have you ever seen one of those water slides that drop a person almost vertically before flattening them out with a long curve? When the person finally hits the curve, they don't "bang" into it and they don't bounce back up into the air. They slide along the curve until they are deposited safely into the deceleration splash pool. Granted, as my bullet scoots along the exit leg, it may produce a slight metal-to-metal scraping sound, but I assure you the audience will not notice this. Keep in mind what Galileo taught us about the time it takes for falling bodies to drop sixteen feet. One second, right? As you can see, the length of my tube is far less than sixteen feet. It's only about four feet tall with no more than a foot and a half of leg length added at the end. The time it will take the bullet to travel the entire length of the tube will be only a small fraction of a second. Schwooom! That bullet has exited the tube before anyone can say, 'I hope no one reveals this twenty five years from now!' The whole process happens within the blink of an eye.

"To allay any lingering fears you may still have, remember I taught you how to misdirect your insertion of the bullets in the tubes by tapping on the glass. That tapping noise will also serve to mask any unforeseen clanking or scraping noises during the quarter-second it takes the bullets to travel through the tubes."

"Steve, you're a genius! Here's a check for a scrillion dollars."


mgidm86, in all honesty, I don't hear what you are hearing. I hear Penn tapping on his glass. I also hear Teller tapping on his glass, off-camera.

The video does reveal something very interesting, though; something I had not noticed before. After the bullets have been fired, Penn's pane of glass is examined up-close. Clearly, there is a jagged bullet hole in the glass. But there are all kinds of splotches all over the rest of the glass, too. What are those? Would anyone care to speculate?
Click to expand...

One paragraph would have been sufficient rather than your condescending wall of text.

You are assuming almost everything in this post. Maybe they did not design the tubes well enough. Maybe they made noise that night.

And hey, Galileo, perhaps it isn't designed quite the way you say and the bullet can rattle in the tube, therefore taking longer to fall. Or perhaps you are correct about everything.

:rolleyes: ..|..
 
Could you make the glass in such a way that the middle part has an (unnoticeable) different resonant frequency than the rest, and then use some type of ultrasound gun to shatter the middle part?
 
If you watch it frame-by-frame you can see that at 6:01, you can't see the glass. Then a couple frames after 6:01, something pops up where the glass was on Penn's side (or the glass becomes visible for some reason). Teller fires at just that moment, but Penn fires a couple frames later. In the three versions I've see on Youtube, Teller always fires first. Also, fire comes out of Teller's gun, but not Penn's. Yet something on the center of Penn's pane of glass obviously blows away from Penn.
 
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