I challenge you to get the queen of hearts to make the water stay in this glass when we turn this glass over. Think you can do it?

Here's what you'll need for this experiment: 1. an ordinary drinking glass. 2. The Queen of Hearts from an ordinary deck of cards (actually any card from the deck will do.)

Now, you'll want to perform this experiment over a sink to ensure that we don't get the floor soaked.

Here's how you do it: 1. Fill the drinking glass half way with water. 2. Place the queen of hearts over the top of the drinking glass making sure that the card covers the entirety of the mouth of the glass. 3. While applying pressure on the card gently turn the glass over. once the glass is completely turned over remove your hand from the card. ZALOOM! The card should now be held in place under the mouth of the glass without any assistance from you, without the water rushing out of the glass.

What's the gimmick you ask?! Well, it's a little thing I like to call air pressure. And it goes a something like this:
You know how when you go down to the bottom of a swimming pool you can feel all that water pushing in on you? Well, even though you can't see it, we live at the bottom of an ocean of air that's always pushing in on us. The air around the card actually pushes up against the card harder than the water pushes down on the card. In fact, you would need a glass of water almost 30 feet high before the water would weigh enough to push the card off the glass.

 

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