I am a father, hacker, musician and math geek who has recently started diving into the world of self-working math card tricks and card sleights. I am currently searching a series of effects that utilize the numbers 1-10, or others. I know the 21 card trick (using 7's), and the 25 card trick (using 5's). one using 9's, and a few that use the even/odd (power of 2). I'd love to find enough tricks to form a countdown of math tricks for my son's 2nd grade class to learn. A trick using 10 cards, using 9 cards, 8 cards,.... all the way down to 1 card. It can be multiples, the number of cards to start the deck, or anything really.

Hi Fiddlermikey.
Tough one to answer without sending you to specific, uncopywritten, sources. Here are a few ideas with references though...

7 - There is an effect in Arthur MacTier's Card Concepts which relies on a principle refered to as Sands' Prime Number Principle (this is from memory, so the title could be something slightly different). The effect here is actually very impressive, and I regularly use this to demonstrate some `higher' mathematics, as the methodology depends on a knowledge of both prime numbers, and group theory! I'm not sure what level you're looking for (I'm English so 2nd grade didn't mean much to me!), but you could always sell this as just being about primes, and ignore the group theory.

1 - The Trapdoor Card by Robert Neale. This has been written up in several books, including Neale's This Is Not A Book, as well as some cheaper volumes like Karl Fulves' Self-Working Paper Magic. There are also plenty of videos of people exposing the effect on youtube. The mathematical relationship here isn't quite what you may be looking for, and the methodology is really about topology... which is certainly beyond school level. However from my experience kids tend to find topology quite fun.

Based on the fact that you only have 1 post I'm guessing that you may also be new to magic, so the references to books above will probably be quite pricey and not necessarily what you're looking for. The Fulves series Self-Working _______ Magic (there are lots of them: including card/number/paper etc) are all cheap, and will contain plenty of stuff for you to start working through. The next step would be to collect Martin Gardner's books of his Scientific American columns. These often had mathematical magic effects in them, and even the non-magic chapters will get you thinking creatively about how to make mathematics more interesting. Both the Fulves books, and the Gardner collections are available cheaply on Amazon. Another cheap, but more specific source would be to look at Jim Steinmeyer's Impuzzibilities series. Each booklet is around $10 and contains several nice self-working effects.

There really is a wealth of information out there, but most of it is tucked away in pricey and out of print books... so avoiding those, your best bet is to look into those cheaper books, and also to watch lots of youtube videos. There are loads of enthusiastic people presenting mathematical effects on youtube, and that could be your best source for now.

Hope that helped.

Owen

Thanks Owen -

I forget sometimes when posting to international audiences that school grades are different in different parts of the world. My son is in Elementary School 2nd grade (7 years old). I am finding that some of these math-based card tricks will require a little higher level of math, but those can be introduced in later years.

I am familiar with some of Martin Gardener's writings. (I taught the kids to make and fold flexagons in Octover.) And I will look for some of the books you've mentioned. If there are rare or out-of-print books that would be considered essential, I'd love to know what to look for. I enjoy a good treasure hunt.

Yes, I'm new to these boards and have only been "practicing" card magic for a couple of months. I have been reading RRTCM and the recent "Mathematical Magic" book. And I know I will be criticized for this, but also gathering some basics from youtube (52Kards, DisturbReality, APZone) but only because I don't know of any professionals in the area who would be willing to teach their craft to a newbie like me and the closes IBM in my area is over an hour away.

Thanks for your help. Great info on these boards!

Two books that I have, which are full of math magic and available from lybrary.com are:
Nine by Philemon Vanderbeck
Magical Mathematics by Persi Diaconis and Ron Graham

I also have many of Werner Miller's books from lybrary, which are all math based.

Magical Mathematics by Persi Diaconis and Ron Graham is very definetly NOT suited for grade shcool students! And probably not middle school or high school students. Good stuff, but pretty deep, and, at least in my opinion, of more interest for the math than the magic.

Murf

I agree with grade school and maybe middle school, but not for high school. Kids these days are much brighter than when I was young. I've got three of them and they were programming way before High school.