16 (number) old days, weighing was done with a beam balance to make equal splits. It would be easier to split a heap of grains into sixteen equal parts through successive divisions than to split into ten parts. Chinese Taoists did finger computation on the trigrams and hexagrams by counting the finger tips and joints of the fingers with the tip of the thumb. Each hand can count up to 16 in such manner. The Chinese abacus uses two upper beads to represent the 5s and 5 lower beads to represent the 1s, the 7 beads can represent a hexadecimal digit from
Thumb tip and then finally the right thumb, which comes quickly out of the hand with the tip on, and the object inside, between the tip and thumb. While the audience is looking at the fist, the performer has chance to misdirect and dump the tip and contents in a pocket, perhaps under cover of putting the hand in the pocket to obtain some "magic dust" to sprinkle on the left fist. Alternatively, the tip may be kept on the thumb for an indeterminate amount of time, using techniques of misdirection and shading to keep it invisible to the audience. An appearance