You might call this the contortionist’s antitwister. It requires a beverage glass but leave out the beverage until you get the hang of it. A lighted candle on a tray also makes a good show, or a plate containing food. We describe it using a plate.

The rotating object is your hand and plate, the connection is your arm, and the stationary object is your torso.

Hold out your right hand in front of you, palm up, and rest the plate on it. During what follows keep the plate upright, your hand parallel to the floor. You will be rotating your hand counterclockwise as viewed from above. Here goes. By raising your elbow turn your hand 180° so your fingers point toward you. Continue turning and you will reach 360°, your fingers pointing away again, although you will have to twist your wrist, arm, and shoulder leftwards to do it.

Now keep turning – you will need to raise the plate over your head but keep your palm parallel to the floor. After another 180° (one and a half turns total) you will be able to lower your arm and go a further 180°, to end up, arm as well as plate, right back where you started. The plate will have rotated 720°, two full turns, and you were holding it right-side up all the while.

In the video below the actor Dick Van Dyke, as the character Caractacus Potts in a children’s movie of 1968, performs the plate trick. He uses his left hand instead of his right which makes his movement the mirror image of the motion described above, clockwise instead of counter-clockwise. He needs a bit more practice. At one point the plate tilts so much that if there were food on it it would slide off. Furthermore, he steps about a quarter turn in the direction of the turning plate, somewhat undermining the effect. (I imagine that because children were in the scene the director could film only so many retakes.)

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This young lady holds her heavy stein of beer so that she can more easily lift, tilt and drink from it: her hand is inside the handle loop, palm toward the glass, thumb down rather than up. Furthermore, and perhaps because of that, she turns the beer mug clockwise instead of counter-clockwise as in our description. (The soundtrack is a 1947 performance of the drinking song from Sigmund Romberg’s 1924 operetta The Student Prince.)

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The following is a schematic of the motion (the clockwise version) made by the computer program  Antitwister.  To obtain a direct link to the video: right-click on the picture, chose “Copy Link,” then paste it where you want.

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·······   plate   ·······   hand   ·······   arm   ·······   body