ABSTRACT
Why do magic tricks entertain us so? Human bodies float and/or get sawed in half. Solid objects pass through other solid objects and back again. Birds and rabbits appear from thin air or from hats much smaller than their bodies. None of these things of course can or does happen, and we know this even as we see them apparently occurring right before our eyes. But we love to think they are happening, and they entertain us so because they juxtapose the impossible onto the possible. Magic plays with and appears to violate the most fundamental principles of our intuitive understanding of physics. What is equally amazing is that children, sometimes very young children, especially love these tricks, because they too have the same intuitive understanding of the physical world, of what is possible and what is impossible.
