Hot foil trick Hot foil trick The hot foil trick is a magic trick in which the magician places a small piece of tin or aluminium foil in a volunteer's hand, and the foil begins to rapidly increase in temperature until the volunteer has to drop it to avoid scalding their hand, and the foil is reduced to ashes on the ground. This effect is achieved by, shortly before performing the trick, surreptitiously exposing the foil to a chemical (such as mercury(II) chloride ) which will cause it to rapidly oxidise. This trick can be very dangerous, since many of the chemicals used
Foil (fencing) or fastening a knob on the point ("blossom", French "fleuret"). In addition to practising, some fencers took away the protection and used the sharp foil for duels. German students took up that practice in academic fencing and developed the "Pariser" ("Parisian") thrusting small sword for the "Stoßmensur" ("thrusting mensur"). The target area for modern foil is said to come from a time when fencing was practised with limited safety equipment. Another factor in the target area is that foil rules are derived from a period when dueling to the death was the norm. Hence, the favoured target area is the