This is another great trick to show your family, friends, and business associates. In this trick, you break a pencil in half with nothing more than a banknote.
How The Trick Appears To The Audience
The Magician borrows banknote, such as five pound note or a dollar bill, and folds it in half lengthwise. He then gets a member of the audience to hold a pencil, one end in either hand, in front of him. With a sweeping action, the Magician strikes the pencil with the banknote and breaks the pencil in two! No matter how hard the other people try, they cannot replicate the trick.
How The Trick Is Done
Give a long pencil to a member of the audience and get them to hold it horizontally, one hand at either end, about waist height, in front of them. Impress upon them that they should hold the pencil tightly. Borrow a banknote from another member of the audience and fold it half lengthwise. Make a show of running your finger down the fold and saying how sharp it is. Then hold the banknote at one end between your thumb and first finger, with the fold at the bottom.
Raise the banknote above the pencil and then quickly bring it down on the pencil in a sweeping, chopping action. Just before the banknote hits the pencil, and under the cover of the banknote, quickly extend your first finger. Your finger and banknote will hit the pencil at the same time and break the pencil in half. As you hand continues its downward motion, quickly retract your finger. If your do it at the right speed, no one will see you moving your finger.
Your audience will be amazed and want to try it themselves. However, without the secret, they will never be able to do it.