Anyone seen this? Opinions?

where to find?

Are you referring to "Gravity Control? Hank Lee is advertising this item in his current Hot List.

Gravity Control found at Hank Lee



"From Yuval Keren, whose Bending Fork and Coin Bender have been international best-sellers, comes his latest, Gravity Control. Again, Yuval has created a blockbuster effect using a truly diabolical method!
Ask for the loan of a watch, a key chain or some similar object.
Attach the object to the bottom of a spring. The weight of the object stretches out the spring. Explain to the audience that you will attempt to control gravity!
Hand the spring to a spectator and ask them to hold it by the end. You concentrate, and it appears that gravity is actually diminishing! The object becomes lighter, and the spring slowly shrinks in the volunteer's hands! It looks absolutely amazing!
In the end, the spring can be handed out for examination. They will find nothing!
Remember, the spring is held by a spectator throughout the routine. You never touch the spring. Ever. There are no threads or wires or any kind of external connections. The spring does all the work. All by itself. It is completely self contained. The method will blow you away! This is original magic, unlike anything you have seen before.
Comes complete with the very special spring, a specially designed carrying case and Yuval's complete routine. (10.1108)
$495.00"

Looking at the price it remembers me on my fork..and on the fridge I had to buy in addition.
There are cheaper ways to achieve that.

But a good idea.

Best,

P

Why must all his stuff cost so much? I can understand keeping out of the reach of the merely curious, but everything he puts out is almost $500.

Chad

He's clearly out of his mind!!!!!!!!

I am sure the material the spring is made of is probably the reason behind the cost.

Of course I don't know the method nor have seen this effect of his. But I can speculate based on his previous works.

Yes, it's the material that makes the stuff so expensive -- and also the method he's found to finish the material so that it appears ordinary.

The effect looks wonderful. It works great. But I have the same reservation I had about his fork -- that the value of this effect is limited because people are becoming more aware of the special material. Once you know about that, the method is utterly obvious.

So, if you can get $500 worth of use from it in a year or so, it may be a good buy. Otherwise, you may want to think carefully before you buy.

Yes, it is the material. A wonderful alloy called nitinol. Very expensive.

He must have a ton of this stuff and is trying to get rid of it any way he can.

Chad

as far as I know you can get Nitinol in russia relatively cheap...

Its unlikely its Nitinol, as that's a Memory Metal and would only return to its shape, once (when heated) and would need to be reset by hand afterwards when cooled.

Although a similar alloy, its more likely its a Muscle Metal that can alter its shape repeatedly under powered control. These have several brand names, Flexinol is one of them.

For an easy source of them, try http://www.teachersource.com and go to the Advanced Science page. You can also buy Nitinol (shape memory metal) from them as well (although they ran out of Nitinol Spoons a long time ago - I think I bought the last few, over a year ago!)

-- Jez.


Also see:

http://www.robosoft.fr/SHEET/10Muscle/10......nol.html

and

http://www.dynalloy.com

and

http://www.nanomuscle.com





Oops!

I made the assumption that Yuval's Spring was repeatedly controllable and could return back and forth into its compressed and uncompressed position at will (as you would get with Flexinol).

I could've overestimated the "effect". It could be that you have to manually reset the spring after the effect has been demonstrated by manually compressing the spring...

In which case, it may well be made of Nitinol... and if so, you can purchase a Nitinol Spring from here :

http://www.robosoft.fr/SHEET/10Muscle/10......nol.html