Through non-magnetic things

Bring a bar magnet near a compass so that the needle turns. Now, without moving either of them, stand a piece of wood up between them. Does the needle turn back? Try again with a cardboard sheet, a thin plastic sheet and a thin glass sheet.

The result: the needle does not change in any way you can notice, whichever sheet you put between them. So a magnet's effect can act through non-magnetic materials. A magnet can move some objects without even touching them!

Reshma uses this at her school fair. In one game, steel balls sit in a maze on a cardboard tray. Move a magnet under the tray, and the balls follow it out of the maze, because the magnet acts through the cardboard.

In another, a steel paper clip has fallen into a glass of water. Hold a magnet against the outside of the glass and slide it up. The clip follows it up the side and out, and neither your fingers nor the magnet get wet. The magnet acts through the glass and the water.