Birthday Binary Magic Trick

Use this fun magic trick to introduce your students to binary!

Curriculum Topics Covered

Powers, binary

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This trick (that often appears in Christmas crackers!) uses binary to make it work.

You could demonstrate the trick to students – our Teacher Notes explain how the trick is done. We’ve then included some suggestions in the notes of how you could help students work out how the trick is done.

Birthday Magic Trick has a copy of the cards and some key questions for students on it. 

And we’ve included Birthday Magic Cards – Print Out that can be printed out and cut up to give students their own copy of the cards. 

See Matt’s video below about binary in the real world! In the video he introduces us to binary overflow problems.