Walking Across Lake Mead

Effect

Criss Angel, dressed like the world’s richest hobo, walks across the surface of Lake Mead, then sinks below the surface and does not reappear until the following week’s episode of Mindfreak.

Secret

As a sequel of sorts to his walk across a swimming pool, Criss Angel set himself a goal of walking across Lake Mead (the largest lake in the United States named after a medieval beverage). Angel decided not to use floating shoes as he did during his walk across a pool in a previous episode because he hates to repeat himself and, as many fans have pointed out, the existence of such shoes violates a number of laws of physics.

Instead, Angel sequestered himself in the shop in his mom’s garage for more than a week, emerging only after he had completed construction of Water Walking Shoes 2.0. These shoes have bottoms lined with special strips of metal that, when activated by the electricity in a series of batteries strapped around the magician’s torso but hidden by his shirt or jacket, energizes any molecules of water they contact, causing them to draw together, effectively increasing the water’s surface tension by a factor of more than a million. “It’s like when you plug a toaster into a wall socket and drop it into a bathtub,” said Angel in a confidential interview that he didn’t know was being recorded while he may have been drunk and/or someone else in disguise. “Except in this case the electric current makes you walk on water instead of killing some bastard whose house you broke into after you found out that he’d posted a bunch of unauthorized, copyright-violating exposure videos of you on YouTube.”

The amount of energy needed to power the shoes is enormous, which explains why Angel was able to walk out into the lake but not to walk back to shore. Instead, when his batteries were exhausted, Angel slowly sank beneath the water. There he quickly swam into the hull of a B-29 that had sunk beneath the surface of Lake Mead in 1948, and which he had previously rendered water tight and fitted with an airlock and enough supplies to keep him healthy and happy for a week.

Levitate Between Buildings

Effect

Criss Angel stands at the edge of a tall building and holds his arms out. He begins to float, levitates over the edge of the building, and flies some distance before coming to light on another building.

Secret

Angel wears big, baggy clothes for a reason. In this case, the reason is that his body is wrapped with inner tubes that are filled with exactly enough helium to make his weight effectively zero. Because he is buoyant in the atmosphere, a little push off with the feet is enough to send Angel flying slowly through the air to his destination.

Note: This same effect was attempted in the 1930s by a German magician who made the mistakes of filling his apparatus with highly flammable hydrogen and attempting the flight while smoking. The resulting explosion was horrifically spectacular.

(sumber: www.mallusionst.vom/magicians/criss-angel/levitate-buildings.shtml)