There are three answers—timing, the natural underestimated strength of your fingers and poor memory.
1—Timing
The trick is always done in two steps—the first with no coordination, the second with exact timing.
There are lots of videos of the Finger Lift on YouTube, one of them claiming that ‘it’s an old Romanian trick’, while others have Chinese or Africans doing it. Whatever country they come from, the participants all use the sequence of no timing followed by exact timing.
In the first attempt to lift the liftee, there is no effort to get everybody to do the lift at the same instant. In fact, there may be deliberate vague misdirection, along the lines of ‘so go ahead, try to lift’. And in all of the videos on YouTube, you can see that the lifters are very much out of sync with each other. This means that for the brief instant that each person is trying to lift the subject by themselves, each of them is fruitlessly trying to lift the entire 50–80 kg weight of the subject on one finger.
However, for the second successful attempt, the timing is very precise. The purpose of the chanting of numbers, a prayer or a song is not to Unleash the Power Within—it’s actually meant to synchronise the four potential lifters into one single lifting unit. And there is usually a countdown to the final lift. So all four lift as one, each having to lift only 12–20 kg with their chosen finger.
2—Finger IS Strong
The second factor is the actual strength of your fingers.
Louis Cyr, the oldtime French Canadian strongman (1863–1912), could lift 553 lb (250.8 kg) with a single finger (his right middle finger). He performed this feat on 8 May 1896. Warren Lincoln Travis, an American vaudeville strongman of the early 1900s, lifted 560 lb (254 kg) with a single finger on his 50th birthday. Using two fingers, he lifted 881.5 lb (399.8 kg).
Each of these strongmen could easily lift the weight of three people with one finger.
Strongman to Cop to Strongman
Louis Cyr, the Canadian strongman, had a father of average size. He got his strongman genes from his mother’s side. She was 1.85 m tall and weighed 120 kg, and her father was 1.93 m tall and weighed 118 kg. Louis himself wasn’t very tall at 1.78 m, but he weighed 144 kg and, apparently, it was nearly all muscle.
At the age of 17, he lifted a heavily laden tractor out of the mud. He entered the strongman circuit and won his first competition by lifting a granite boulder weighing 217.7 kg. At the age of 20, he broke up a knife fight and carried the two offenders to the police station—one under each arm. He was offered, and accepted, a job with the Montreal police, which he held for two years before going on tour again. He did this successfully for many years, before dying of kidney disease. The great strongman, Joe Weider, wrote a book about him, The Strongest Man in History: Louis Cyr, ‘Amazing Canadian’.
3—Poor Memory
The third factor is our very fallible human memory, which then later embroiders the event to make it more impressive.
Every person who has described their experience to me has expressed amazement at the strange mystical powers that gave them the ability to not only lift the subject into the air, but also to hold them there effortlessly.
But every time I have seen it done, in real life and on YouTube, the lifters just barely got the subjects off the ground. And then, they did not hold them up for any length of time and, in fact, almost dropped them in their haste to get them down to the ground again.
So the Finger Lift experience gets the rose-coloured glasses treatment with the passage of time.
The Finger Lift party trick has made it into popular culture with appearances in South Park (the ‘Marjorine’ episode) and in the film, The Craft. In each case, it was associated with exotic witchcraft, not prosaic timing.
But the simple explanations really give the finger to the myth.
References
Kelly, Lynne, The Skeptic’s Guide to the Paranormal, Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2004, pp 236–238.
‘Poosh ’em up’, Time, 18 August 1941.
All Fire, No Power
Cars need fuel to run. And fuel has never been free. So for the more than a century that cars with petrol engines have been around, much has been done to improve fuel economy. With lots of hard work, this has been achieved. However, don’t believe the easy, drop-a-pill-into-your-fuel-tank claims—they are just a con.
The People Who Know
The alarm bells should ring whenever you hear or read the slogan ‘easy improvement in fuel economy’.
The US Federal Trade Commission for the Consumer—a really good source of reliable, trustworthy information—has tested over a dozen different categories of ‘gas-savers’. These products all claim to operate by modifying some part of the engine’s working cycle.
The US government is frankly sceptical about these products, their laboratory tests over the past 30 years or so showing that these products don’t work.
The Car Engine
After doing some tinkering on a car engine, I am always slightly astonished if the engine actually works again. There is something quite amazing about a collection of several hundred lifeless metal and plastic parts that spring into life and keep on spinning by drinking a brownish liquid.
The mechanism of a car engine starts in the fuel tank. The fuel is pumped to the engine and then turned into tiny droplets, to make a mist or vapour with an initial ratio of petrol to air of about 1:15. This vapour is then sent inside the engine and compressed to a volume between eight and 12 times smaller. Then, while it is compressed, it is ignited at exactly the right moment by a spark plug. As the petrol–air vapour burns explosively, it expands in volume, pushing the piston away. The piston is connected to the crankshaft, which rotates. This rotary motion is passed to the gearbox, then down the rest of the drive train until it finally rotates the wheels, and makes the car move.
This is how fuel turns into motion.
There are many points along this chain where you can increase your fuel economy.
We have learnt more about the car petrol engine in the past 20 years than we did in the whole of the previous 80 years. Computers continually tune the engine, hundreds of times each second, to get the best combination of power, economy and emissions. Depending on the intended use of the engine, one of these three is optimised. Therefore, a sports car might sacrifice a little economy to get more power, while a hybrid might aim for maximum economy. And car manufacturers always have to comply with the emissions regulations of the country in which they are selling the car.
Have I got a booty-fuel deal for you!
It might restore performance. It could potentially help your engine. It may increase your fuel efficiency, and, it possibly could make you go faster. BUT…IT DEFINITELY WILL lighten your wallet!
Petrol or Gasoline
In the UK and Australia, the liquid that you put into your tank is called ‘petrol’. In the USA, ‘petrol’ or ‘petroleum’ is ‘rock oil’—the stuff that comes out of the ground. When it is refined into a liquid that goes into your tank, it is then called ‘gasoline’. This is usually shortened to ‘gas’, even though it’s not a gas, it’s a liquid.
The English language must be so confusing for people trying to learn it as a second language.
1—The Liquid Fuel
Some ‘gas-savers’ are fuel additives—stuff you tip into the fuel tank. But there are also devices that you fit on, or in, the fuel line that runs from the tank to the engine. These fuel line devices include heaters or coolers, magnets to ‘correctly align the molecules’ and even exotic metal alloys from secret Russian laboratories. With this last one, the fuel is supposed to wash over the metal alloy, pick up tiny amounts of the secret metal and carry it into the combustion chamber where it ‘improves’ your fuel economy.
US Federal Trade Commission engineers have tested virtually every one of these ‘gas-savers’. Not one has made any difference.
And think about the fuel line heaters and coolers. Some salespeople reckon that you can improve y
our fuel economy by heating the fuel, while others reckon that you need to cool the fuel. They can’t both be right.
Computers in Cars
Computers in cars have enormously improved the power, economy and emissions of the engine—a good thing.
However, there is a downside. If the computer dies, the owner has to pay several thousand dollars to replace it, as it cannot usually be repaired (under our current economic and technological system). You can buy a lot of fuel for several thousand dollars.
2—Fuel–Air Mist Mixture
The ‘ideal’ fuel–air ratio is about 1:15. With too much air, the engine runs too hot and emissions increase. With too much fuel, economy decreases, emissions increase and raw unburnt fuel accumulates on the inside of the cylinder walls. This fuel can wash off the lubricating oil between the cylinder wall and the piston, increasing wear.
One ‘gas-saving’ device, the Air-Bleed device, allows small quantities of extra air into the fuel–air mixture, supposedly allowing less fuel in and, hopefully, giving better fuel economy. All it really does is overheat the engine and worsen the emissions out of the tailpipe. ‘Vapour Bleed’ devices do the same thing, but first run the air through a liquid, such as water, or water and antifreeze, or something exotic. Once again, neither of these Bleed devices has ever been proven to work.
Other odd devices in this category of ‘gas-savers’ are ‘Mixture Enhancers’ (whatever ‘enhancing’ the mixture means). They claim to improve fuel economy by increasing the turbulence of the fuel–air mist. (In reality, you want to reduce the turbulence.) They are placed inside the intake pipes before the fuel–air mist reaches the combustion chamber. These ‘Mixture Enhancers’ can be truly bizarre, with fans, tiny propellers, metal tubes with fins, and even a metal plate with holes in it. You guessed it, they don’t work either.
The ‘Liquid Injection’ device has a little tank of water or methylated spirits hooked into the intake system of the engine. This process does give a very small improvement in fuel economy, but at a cost of increasing engine emissions—and extra dollars.
3—Internal Engine Modification
These devices usually have a mechanism to reduce the fuel burn by shutting down a few of the cylinders, when you don’t need full power.
Big car companies have been trying to perfect this procedure for a few decades. In the early days, they had problems with engines self-destructing. Recently, they have managed to shut down a few cylinders without destroying the engine.
Can you believe that a backyard mechanic, without the massive resources of the car companies, could make such a mechanism? Some of the devices tested provided a tiny increase in fuel economy, but with an increase in emissions and significantly less reliability.
4—Oils and Oil Additives
Also available are expensive ‘special’ oils that supposedly reduce friction between the moving parts inside the engine, and so improve fuel economy. Expensive oil additives are also used.
And yes, none of them work.
5—Ignition Devices
At a specified time in the cycle of the engine’s operation, the spark plug has to fire.
There have been many devices on the market, which ‘improve’ this spark—to make it fire for longer, or at a higher or lower voltage, in fact any claim that will convince you to hand over some money. They don’t work either.
6—Driving Habit Modifiers
These devices monitor how you accelerate through the gears, and/or how hard you press the accelerator while cruising at a fixed speed. They then give you some kind of signal (a light or a sound) to tell you to drive more gently, or to change up or down a gear.
Yes, these devices do give a very modest improvement in fuel economy and do not increase emissions. But they are expensive. In half an hour you can learn how to do this by yourself without the help of a modifier.
Be Sceptical
The US Federal Trade Commission also provides very practical advice. Be wary, they write, of the following types of advertising claims—that the product improves fuel economy by 20% (they do not and cannot), and that various government bodies have endorsed the device. You should also be wary of companies that provide glowing personal testimonies about their products.
Very few customers have the training or access to the appropriate facilities to perform comparative fuel economy tests accurately. In the case of Firepower, an Australian company (which sold a $1.50 pill as a fuel additive), one glowing testimonial came from a company that coincidentally had the same address as Firepower, while another came from ‘Joseph and Julie in Fiji’.
In September 2005, the American magazine Popular Mechanics published an article about the testing of several ‘gas-savers’. None showed any improvement, most reduced the engine’s horsepower, and one caught on fire, needing fire extinguishers to put out the blaze. The author, Mike Allen, pointed out that your engine already burns over 99% of the fuel, because less than 1% of the unburnt or partially burnt fuel leaves the engine block.
There are no easy improvements. Indeed, one Australian manufacturer moved heaven and earth in the manufacture of a recently launched car trying to get the fuel economy to less than 11 litres/100 km—a number psychologically significant to new car buyers. If a $1.50 pill really did provide a 20% improvement, they would have tried it.
Firepower
Firepower, the Australian-based company, built its considerable and temporary fortune by selling a pill that would improve your fuel economy (by up to 42%!). All you had to do was add it to your petrol tank. Firepower seems to be the latest in a long line of companies that appear with a miraculous product, make a lot of money, and then vanish, leaving a lot of people without their money.
Firepower first burst into the media in November 2006, with the announcement of a $3 million sponsorship of the Rabbitohs, a Sydney rugby league club. Indeed, Russell Crowe (a part owner of the Rabbitohs) announced this sponsorship on Jay Leno’s Tonight Show in the USA.
Firepower also sponsored the Sydney Kings basketball team, which gratefully renamed itself the Firepower Sydney Kings.
Since then, Firepower has been linked to federal and state politicians and bureaucrats, the Australian government agency Austrade, the former Australian Prime Minister John Howard, the former Australian ambassador in Pakistan, the arms trade in Romania, former German heads of Haliburton, the Western Force Rugby Club, the Tongan National Rugby team and even the Australian Superbike Championship, the Australian V8 Supercar racing team and the Porsche Carrera Cup.
At one stage, Firepower was supposedly worth $3.5 billion—pretty amazing for an empire built on a little brown pill (costing $1.50) that you pop into your fuel tank, and which supposedly increases your car’s fuel economy. But there were problems—they refused to get their special pill independently tested, they didn’t provide financial records to investors, and they delayed their stockmarket listing.
Oh yes, there was another problem—the pill didn’t actually improve fuel economy. What a surprise!
What a Fool I Was…
And yes, I myself have been fooled. I bought an expensive liquid injection device for my very first car, a Beetle. And later I tried a few fuel additive products—and I was a sucker for secret Russian metal alloy pipes. I have also tried both Teflon and molybdenum disulphide oil additives. Oh yes, I also tried various spark improvers. Being slightly obsessive, I measured the fuel economy, both with and without the devices for several months—and none of them made any difference.
Why did it take me so long to learn my lesson? I guess that I was being ‘fuelish’…
Real Fuel Economy Improvement
There are many things that you can do to improve fuel economy.
Drive intelligently to anticipate the driving situation on the road ahead. Drive at 90 kph rather than at 110 kph—you will use 10% less fuel. (Unfortunately, it’s very unsafe to drive at such a slow speed on a freeway when everyone else is driving to the speed limit.) Higher gears and cruise control can hel
p, as does car maintenance. And keep the pressure of the tyres up. If all four tyres are 25% below normal, you lose 5% fuel economy. Keep the air filter clean. A dirty air filter can drop your fuel economy by 10%. And remove excess weight from the boot. If you ‘store’ junk in the boot of your car, it’s just dead mass. Every time you accelerate, you have to burn extra fuel to bring the speed of this junk from zero to cruising speed.
Try not to drive during peak hour. By avoiding traffic jams, you can save 50% of the fuel.
Try to combine errands, to take one trip instead of three—or walk or ride a bike. And, of course, you can save 100% of the fuel by not taking the car.
References
Allen, Mike, ‘Looking for a miracle: We test automotive “fuel savers”’, Popular Mechanics, September 2005, pp 104–108.
‘Gas-saving tips’, The New York Times, 6 August 2006.
Magnay, Jacquelin and Ryle, Gerard, ‘Castles in the air: A life to crow about’, Sydney Morning Herald, 7 June 2008, p 8.
Ryle, Gerard, ‘Firepower link to dead dictator and former spy’, Sydney Morning Herald, 30 January 2007, p 5.
Ryle, Gerard, ‘Petrol pill claims debunked 15 years ago’, Sydney Morning Herald, 2 February 2007.
US Federal Trade Commission: Protecting America’s Consumers, Facts for Consumers, ‘“Gas-Saving” Products: Fact or Fuelishness?’: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/autos/aut10.shtm.
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