I enjoyed your site very much, but I’m a Southerner and have never actually been in a bar with glasses. We drink out of bottles. Long necks.

I worked myself through graduate school as a bartender (beertender) for years and have seen more bar tricks than most people. Years after graduation a friend and I ended up in a rural bar and the bartender and I began to discuss bar tricks. I would say, can you remove a cork from inside a wine bottle without damaging the bottle, and he would nod. He would say, do you know about the game with five stacks of coins, each stack staggered for one to five and you can take any number of coins you want as long as you only select from one stack and I will always leave you with the last coin? And I would nod.

We continued this tit for tat until he was convinced that I was a hard sell, then he told me of the greatest bar trick I had ever seen.
From under the bar he took out a large box of kitchen matches. These are the three inch wooden kind with a blue and yellow (and other color) head. He then took a knife and delicately cut the sulfur and phosphorous heads off and laid them on the bar. He then walked to the garbage can and took out an empty Coke bottle and filled it to the rim with water. (I realized later that he was careful to fill it completely, with a bubble of water extending up from the top like a tiny dome.)

I watched as he dropped the first match head into the bottle and it sunk straight to the bottom. He then dropped the second and the third in the water and they all sank straight to the bottom of the bottle. He held the fourth up for inspection and said that it would not sink to the bottom, but stop about half way from the top and bottom, and not only that, the other three match heads would rise to meet it and all four match heads would hover somewhere around the middle of the bottle.

I began to ask stupid questions like, Could I cut another match head myself, Could I go buy my own box of matches, Are you going to move the bottle, etc. etc. etc, but he assured me that nothing would touch the bottle but his hands and that they were contaminated with nothing that could aid in the feat, no one would assist him, etc., etc., etc. But, of course, he did it. He dropped the last match head into the bottle and not only did it stop half way to the bottom, but the other three rose to meet it and all four hovered at mid-level. I seldom pay my own bar tab with this trick, but I don’t give it away for free.

After the man dropped the last match head into the bottle, he simply placed his thumb over the lip of the bottle (remember that is was overfilled to the point of having a dome) sealing it completely. With his other hand, he applied great force onto the thumb, thus
pressurizing the fluid within. Thus pressurized, for what reason I can't fathom, the last match stopped its descent at mid flight, and the other match heads rose to the same level. By increasing and decreasing the pressure, he could maneuver the head to just about any position he desired.

PS: I have not pulled the Hovering Match Head trick since the 1980's and can not guarantee that the chemicals used in more modern kitchen matches produce the same effect. Before you publish our findings, you may want to ascertain if the more modern chemicals will suffice.