Presently, in the silence in which they were sitting, he had an idea. He took from a pocket Mrs Palfrey’s five-pound note. He smoothed it carefully and, holding it by one corner, dangled it in front of Rosie. ‘Do you know this trick?’ he asked. As she did not answer, he went on quickly, ‘You’d think it quite simple. You’ll probably think me simple for suggesting it. But you’d be surprised. All you have to do is to catch it when I let go, and if you can, you keep it.’
She looked at him with astonishment – her first change of expression from disdain.
‘Come on!’ he said coaxingly, as if to a child. ‘Just snatch at it with your little paw.’
He let go of the note and she caught it between thumb and finger and stared at him uncomprehendingly. Then she resumed her disdain and he in his turn looked astonished.
‘I’ve never seen that happen before,’ he said
The calculations I demonstrated on the board were based on a €5 banknote, though it is worth noting that a £5 note is very similar in size. As shown in the video, the banknote takes approximately 0.16 seconds to fall. This duration is significantly shorter than the average human reaction time, which typically ranges between 0.25 and 0.35 seconds.
This disparity is exactly why it is nearly impossible to catch the note before it slips through your fingers. In fact, this was once a staple of fairground scams, much like the deceptive tactics used by shell game swindlers.
Theoretically, anyone who succeeds in catching the note is not "reacting" in the traditional sense, but rather anticipating the drop. This is comparable to track and field regulations: an athlete is charged with a false start if they move within 0.1 seconds of the starting pistol. Even if they move after the sound, the rules dictate that a human cannot physically process and respond to a stimulus that quickly—meaning they must have guessed the timing.
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