Silly / Absurd

#89 · Balance it on your nose

Set the flat end on your nose, extend your arms, and achieve perfect stillness. A classic street performer skill. Practice required.

It achieves nothing. It teaches nothing. It has no application whatsoever. Everyone should still, at least once, balance a chopstick upright on the end of their nose, because it is one of the few remaining activities that is completely free and mildly astonishing when it works.

How to do it

Tilt your head back until your nose points at the ceiling.
Rest the blunt, heavier end of the chopstick on the tip of your nose.
Take your hand away and immediately stop trying so hard.
Correct with tiny movements of the neck, watching the top of the chopstick rather than the bottom.

Why it works

Balancing an inverted pendulum is a control problem, and the trick is that your corrections have to lead the fall rather than react to it. Watching the top works because the top moves furthest and earliest, giving you a fraction of a second more warning. Heavier end up genuinely helps too: it raises the centre of mass, which slows the rate of toppling and buys your reflexes more time.

Tips & warnings

Heavier end up. It feels wrong and it is correct.
Practise over a sofa. It will fall a great many times.
Circus performers use exactly this technique on far larger objects, which is either encouraging or not.