7 ms·
I love impossible objects. I've been obsessed with them since discovering them in the late 90s. Eng is a legend in the field. My favorite part of this hobby is
by noman-land 6y ago
I love impossible objects. I've been obsessed with them since discovering them in the late 90s. Eng is a legend in the field.
My favorite part of this hobby is that no one will tell you how they made their bottles unless you're a fellow bottle maker. The whole point is to encourage people to try their own ideas.
I was inspired to make a number of these myself out of curiosity. I used to email these guys as a teenager and exchange techniques.
Deck of cards in a bottle is really fun and impressive. Total mind f. The ones with the cellophane wrapper still in are just great.
http://bottlemagic.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Cards-in-Bottle-1-1.jpg http://bottlemagic.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Cards-in-B...
Rubik's cube in a jar is a great one.
http://images.penguinmagic.com/images/products/original/12586a-5845872a9ed5d.jpg http://images.penguinmagic.com/images/products/original/1258...
And I think my favorite of all, the baseball in the salsa jar. Maybe my favorite art object in the world.
http://bottlemagic.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/MLB-in-Salsa-Jar-3-.jpg http://bottlemagic.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/MLB-in-Sal...
Also a really fun conversation piece to have on a desk or at home. You have no idea how angry people get when you won't confirm or deny their theories and tell them to try it themselves. No you can't just push the baseball in by force.
Just to give you an idea of how insane these people are in their quest. It is said that Eng invented a tiny vice that could be disassembled, fed piece by piece into a bottle and reassembled inside. A bent coin would be fed through the neck of the bottle and the vice would be used to unbend the coin inside the bottle. The vice is then disassembled and removed.
- 6nf 6y agoHmmmm you could maybe force the baseball through a metal tube that's just barely small enough to pop out in the bottle without breaking the bottle? Otherwise you'd have to do some weight reduction surgery around the equator of the baseball which gets inflated again using a one-way valve hidden between the seams?
- noman-land 6y agoOne unwritten rule with these things is that you can't "cheat". For example put an empty box of cards in the bottle and then fill it with sand. If it's a baseball, it's a baseball, not a balloon wrapped in leather.
- 2bitencryption 6y agoI'm assuming another unwritten rule is that there must be no trickery with the bottle itself? I.e. no taking a "wide mouth" bottle, filling it with some stuff, then somehow heating/narrowing the bottle? (Perhaps that isn't physically possible anyway, without leaving visible evidence)
- noman-land 6y agoYes exactly. People's first guess is often (the very boring) "did you just glue the bottom of the bottle on? What?? No! Did you blow the glass around the baseball? Um, no. "Everything goes through the neck"
- aj7 6y agoOf course that’s what they do, in most cases. The real trick is to get your mind enrolled in the intricate fiction of how.
- ganafagol 6y agoThing is: it's not fiction.
- noman-land 6y agoI've personally made some of these and I can assure you the salsa jar came from a grocery store shelf. Everything goes through the neck. Gluing the glass back together would be so incredibly boring.
- sandworm101 6y agoThere is trickery. Note the imperfections in the glass. The distortions created by the glass mask imperfections in the contents. For instance, those rubrics cubes look well bent, like they have been stretch and partially disassembled.
- risos 6y ago
- aj7 6y agoYou have never held a baseball, or seen its ~30% deformation when it is hit by a bat that reverses its momentum. It is hard. One fellow just does card decks. Perhaps he has a set of special tools. But a baseball?
- mrandish 6y agoI don't actually know how it was done but based on the apparent 'ethos' of makers of impossible bottles, I would guess it's probably a legit baseball and still contains original baseball contents. It seems that these puzzle-makers are creating for the appreciation of their fellow constructors as much as they are for us newbs. I expect the 'good ones' don't rely on easy cheats as much as extreme cleverness, bespoke tools and jigs and painstaking specialized labor. My guess as to the method is the maker partially unstitched the baseball at the seam and then cut the insides into slices. Then restitched the baseball with enough pieces absent to fit through the bottle's neck and leaving a large enough opening in the seam to insert the remaining pieces once in the bottle. Insert the partially open, partially full baseball then insert the pieces, perhaps with double-sided tape pre-applied so they remain in proper position. Then stitch the open seam closed.
- hinoki 6y agoMy first guess was that the centre of the baseball, without the leather, could fit through the mouth. Then the baseball is carefully re-stitched. If that’s the way it was done, it would need quite a bit of skill and patience!
- raldi 6y agoIt's apparently extremely difficult even to stitch up a baseball without the jar.
- stevage 6y agoTo be fair though, the baseball doesn't have to perform like a normal baseball afterwards, or even submit to very close inspection. The bottom part would only have to look like it is properly stitched.
- noman-land 6y agoJust to add a little color here. In person you can easily inspect all sides of the jar and ball, and there's just enough room in the jar to spin the baseball around. It sorta rattles around in the jar.
- ww520 6y agoMost baseball cores are made of wood cork. When socked in hot water, it can be "cooked" until soft. Then it can be squeezed into the bottle. When dried, the cork restores to its original round shape and hardness.
- aj7 6y agoEven if this were attempted successfully, around the baseball is uniformly spun thin yarn. The round shape is created by doing this accurately. And then you tightly sew the horsehide halves together? Are you kidding me?
- matsemann 6y agoCool, no idea how they are done. It's always fun discussing how such objects are made. I've spent some time making impossible objects as well. A different kind of impossible, where the object changes appearance based on where it's viewed from. https://github.com/Matsemann/impossible-objects https://github.com/Matsemann/impossible-objects
- mstade 6y agoThis blows my mind – well done and thanks for sharing!
- StavrosK 6y agoOh that looks really fun as well!
- noman-land 6y agoWow I love these so much.
- IAmGraydon 6y agoMy first guess on the baseball is soak it in liquid nitrogen to shrink it a bit, put it in the jar and then let it come up to room temp.
- dkersten 6y agoI have a “playing cards in a bottle” one on my desk as a reminder that seemingly impossible things often are quite possible, given enough imagination, patience and perseverance.