Magical spinning fork totally defies gravity

Every once in a while we bear witness to an event that seem to defy every known law to man. Quite often, these events are deemed to be magical, or even a miracle as we try to understand what we have witnessed. This spinning fork is one such event.

On what seemed to be an average outing to a local restaurant, this patron discovered her cutlery seemed to be magnetized. As she picked up her knife, the fork slid towards the knife and stuck to the butt end of the knife. As she raised her knife, the fork lifted off the table and stayed suspended beneath the knife.

As the ends of the fork and knife are both rounded, it was amazing to see the fork stayed connected to the knife by such a tiny amount of contact. It seemed to defy the laws of physics!

What she did next made everything magical! She reached forward and gently spun the fork causing it to spin beneath the knife. You would expect the fork to go crashing to the table due to its weight – but instead, the fork spun effortlessly and quietly beneath the knife as if some magical, unforeseen force, other than magnetism, were at play. This is such an amazing sight, we bet you’ll have to watch it twice!

It is not uncommon to find restaurant cutlery magnetized. There are currently two theories as to how this happens: the cutlery catcher magnet theory and the ball burnishing theory.

Restaurants often use a cutlery catcher magnet placed over a trashcan. As uneaten food is scraped into the trashcan, cutlery often falls off of plates and into the trashcan. In order to prevent the cutlery from winding up in the trash, a magnetized metal cone is placed over the bin. As cutlery falls in, the magnetized cone grabs the cutlery, preventing it from dropping into the trashcan.

A more plausible explanation is that the cutlery is magnetized at the time of manufacture. After cutlery is made, it passes through a ball burnisher which finish polishes the forks, knives and spoons. The burnisher contains thousands of small beads that are moved around by positively and negatively charged magnets underneath. As the cutlery moves through the beads, a magnetic charge is imparted into the cutlery.

Regardless how this fork and knife wound up magnetized, it’s truly an amazing and magical sight to see it spinning effortlessly in the air!