You'll need some eggs for this exciting Mini Miss party trick!

What to do:

1. Place 3 beakers in a triangle as close together as possible.
2. Pour water into each of the beakers until they are half full.
3. Put the placemat on top of the beakers, with the smooth picture side facing down.
4. Stand 3 of the tubes on top of the placemat, positioning them up so that one tube is lined up with the centre of each beaker.
5. Now place an egg on top of each of the 3 tubes, with the pointy end pointing to the ceiling.
6. Grip the placemat with your preferred hand.
7. Count to 3, and then in one quick move pull the placemat out from under the tubes. The eggs should all fall into the beakers.
8. This does take practice - so if it doesn't work first time, keep trying. The trick is to pull out the placemat VERY quickly.
9. Once you've perfected the trick with 3 eggs and 3 beakers, try it with 4 beakers and eggs, and then even 5!

This is all to do with friction (the title is a bit of a give-away really!). If you feel the placemat, you will notice that the picture side is the smoothest of the two sides, with the cork side feeling the roughest. Rough things have more friction than smooth ones so this means that the cork side of the placemat has lots more friction than the picture side.

When you pull on the placemat the smooth picture side glides over the beakers (because there's not much friction) whereas the cork side (where there is lots of friction) grips the tubes and carries them away with the placemat. So with the placemat and tubes gone, this just leaves the eggs dangling above the water-filled beakers. Gravity then does its thing and pulls the eggs down into the beakers, with the water providing cushioning for the eggs, meaning that they don't break...hopefully!