8 amazing tricks that seem to break the laws of science

Here, a flame seems to travel from the tip of a lighter to the wick of a candle. That's because when you light a candle, the heat from the flame vaporizes the wax. When you blow the candle out, the vaporized wax lingers in the air. If you apply a heat source before the vapor dissipates, it will ignite and relight the wick of the candle.

All you need to produce a fire tornado like this one is a turntable, some cotton swabs drenched in denatured alcohol, a soup can, and a mesh garbage can to contain it. Just light the cotton swabs on fire, set the turntable in motion, and watch as the flame shapes itself into a spiraling vortex of fire.

It might seem kind of counterintuitive to light your hand on fire. But in this video, one brave person has coated her hand in a mixture of dishwashing liquid, butane gas, and water. Because the gas has such a high vapor pressure, only the gas burns when she lights it on fire, leaving her hand unscathed.

In this trick, a candle balanced between two glasses is able to move without being touched, teetering back and forth like a seesaw. According to Isaac Newton's third law of motion, "for every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction." As wax drips off each end of the candle, it delivers a slight upward recoil, causing the candle to rock back and forth.

In this trick, when you microwave a lit matchstick trapped in a glass, it erupts into a violent ball of plasma.

Here's how it works:

When something is on fire, electrons are freed from its atoms. But this freedom doesn't last very long — the electrons are usually recaptured by the molecules, causing them to lose energy and emit light, giving fire its signature glow.

But in a microwave, the electric field actually shoves the electrons above the source of the fire, shaking them around, and causing them to smack into air molecules. This kicks them into even higher-energy orbits. As the electrons fall back, they emit light, producing a glowing ball of plasma above the flame. Since the plasma is hotter than the air around it, it usually rises.

It's actually possible to cause objects to move in slow motion down hills (without the help of special effects). To do this, you use a thick liquid, such as honey, a heavy metal ball, and an empty ball-shaped container. Place the heavy ball in the lower half of the sphere and fill the lower half of the container with honey.

The thickness of the honey hampers the speed at which the inner sphere spins around, causing the ball to move very, very slowly down the slope.

This effect is produced when you place a burning candle on a plate covered in water and then cover the flame with a glass. As the flame starts to burn out, the water rushes upward into the glass kind of like ... magic.

What's actually happening is the flame is raising the temperature of the gases trapped in the glass, making them push outward against the liquid. As the flame fizzles out, the temperature of the gas falls back down. This lowers the pressure in the glass, causing the water to flow into it.