Chapter 4

“Thanks again for the dinner last night, I had a really good time,” Selina said the next day, as she entered Tom’s office.

“No problem,” Tom replied. “I enjoyed it too. And thanks for fixing my car.”

“So, you didn’t have any problems driving it here today?” Selina asked.

“Nope,” Tom said. “It’s as good as new. Or, at least as good as it was before it broke down.”

Selina chuckled.

“What brings you here today?” Tom asked.

Selina sat down on the chair on the other side of Tom’s desk, and placed her backpack on the ground. She reached down and opened the backpack, and pulled out a smaller cloth bag. She unceremoniously placed the cloth bag on the desk with a small plod.

“What’s that?” Tom asked.

“I’ve thought of a way to prove to you that magic exists,” Selina declared, gesturing at the bag.

Tom leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms, waiting for Selina to continue.

“In the bag there are five stones with different colors. I’ve cast a spell on some of them, and the rest are just regular stones. You can observe them and see what you think about them, and we can compare notes later,” Selina said.

“And how does this prove magic’s existence to me?” Tom asked.

Selina reached into her backpack again, and pulled out a small envelope. “I’ve written down what spells were cast on which stones here,” Selina said. She put the envelope on the desk beside the bag of stones. “After you have written your notes down, we can open my envelope and compare them. That way, you can’t say that I have hindsight bias. I’ve thought through this, and I believe this will be a double blind experiment!” Selina continue excitedly.

“Hmm,” Tom said. He kept quiet for a few moments and thought over Selina’s description. “Okay, what should I be noticing about this stones?”

“Uh-uh,” Selina said, shaking a finger. “I’m not going to bias your observations. In fact, I’ll leave your office now, and come back in ten minutes so we can compare notes.”

Selina grinned and stood up. She left her backpack on the floor, and gave a wink to Tom as she stepped out of the office.

Tom picked up the bag on stones and shook it slightly. He could feel that stones inside rattling normally. He opened the bag and glanced inside. He could see some stones, probably five like Selina had said. He poured the stones out onto his desk.

The stones were roughly the same size, and each had a differently colored dot on it: green, red, purple, yellow, and blue.

Tom picked up the stones one by one and turned each stone around with his fingers to see their shapes. The stones’ shapes looked unremarkable. They were slightly different in shape and density, but seemed to otherwise be normal stones.

Should I sort them by weight? Tom considered. Nah, that it would be too obvious. He glanced at Selina’s envelope on his desk, but decided that he would just play along and see what happened.

Tom picked up each stone in turn again. He noticed that some were slightly warmer to the touch than others. Tom thought: Maybe that’s it? The stones have different heat capacities? Selina would claim she cast some sort of fire spell on them. Tom jotted down which stones were warmer on a post-it note on his desk.

Tom picked up the stone with the red marking, and threw it in the air slightly, before catching it again. He did the same with the other stones, and noticed that some stones went higher than others, even when he tried to throw them with the same strength. Interestingly, the blue stone, which was one of the heavier stones, went the highest. Tom added more notes about how high each stone got in the air when he threw them.