The Harry Potter phenomenon sparked a fascination with magic among American people and Jane Snell Copes author of The Chemical Wizardry of Harry Potter wants us to know that we too can recreate some of the magical happenings in the books and movies. There are several instances where science is applied in the Harry Potter universe such as; the mechanics of wands, colored flames, and magical ink and paper. Each of these magical events have a scientific explanation and can be recreated in real life, allowing all muggles to harness some magic.
Colored flames and lights are a huge part of the magical effects described in the books and portrayed in the movie. These colored reactions show the spell is effective and also sets each one apart from the other. Copes explains, “Both the commercial fireworks industry and traditional qualitative flame tests rely on vibrant colors produced when metal salts are heated to incandescence…”(Copes 1). This is the beginning of an explanation behind how different colored lights and flames are achieved. There is a table provided in the article that lists natural elements and metals that give off a specific color when lit on fire. This can allow for just about anyone to recreate the effect from the wizarding world and they can produce their own “spells”. I think it is interesting that there is a real life way to make these things happen, it goes to show that J.K. Rowling may have done her research while writing her series, knowing her audience could make her magic come to life.
Another link between the wizarding world and science are the wands that the wizards use to create their magic. Wands produce an end product of a spell and without them, the wizard cannot cast their magic on anything, except for maybe when making a potion. This suggests that there is a process that happens between the time that a wizard casts a spell and when it gets released from the wand itself. Copes goes on to say that, “Every wizard needs a magic wand, just as every chemist needs a stirring rod (perhaps with catalytic particles attached)…” (Copes 1). As I suggested before, Copes describes the wand as a catalyst for magic, it is essentially how the “finished product” or spell is dispersed. This is the same thing that happens during a chemical reaction; two things are combined and usually they react to one another or there is a third source that causes the reaction (stirring something, applying heat etc.). These real life concepts are able to be applied to all of these magical concepts which continues to prove that magic may be achievable for us muggles too.
Other magical materials that appear in the Wizarding World are things such as, enchanted quills, Marauder’s Map, and the magical appearing ink depicted in the movies. All of these occurrences seem impossible but Copes tells us that,” Many invisible inks can be concocted with kitchen ingredients. Most of the effects are not reversible, although they are charming nonetheless…”(Copes 2). So this magical effect can be recreated in our own homes and there is once again, a logical explanation. Copes once again provides a table of several accessible materials can make color-changing and/or disappearing ink. Substances as simple as lemon juice or baking soda can create these effects of they are prepared correctly. If we can attain these abilities, it suggests that we are capable of more than we think as mere muggles.
Science is a concept that everyone learns about in some point in their life. At some point, everyone asks “when will I even use this?” and Copes has given us the answer to that question. The magic of Harry Potter can be brought to life if we use simple, everyday items and apply fairly simple concepts and scientific methods. It goes to show that we have more potential power than we think we do as “ordinary” humans. It turns out that a lot of our general knowledge can be considered to be magic.

Many people have crushes, admire a certain character, music artist, celebrity or real life person, but those people being “crushed” on don’t always know that is happening. “…parasocial relationships (PSRs) are more or less stable, long-term construals media users hold and can access both during and between exposure to messages featuring a media character…”(Schmid 254). These relationships are common with fictional characters, and famous artists and actors. There is a debate between what it means to admire someone versus obsessing over them, many times the line between two can be blurred. It is important to know when a parasocial relationship becomes unhealthy.
When people hear the name Harry Potter you almost always get a reaction, they either love the book series and the character himself, or they hate him. For those who love him, that could be taken quite literally sometimes. The way Rowling wrote the series allowed for readers to grow with Harry and his friends as the books continued and that in itself establishes a strong relationship, whether Harry knows it or not. This connection formed between these characters and the reader have resonated with people long after they have read the books and watched the movies. I would say that I have a strong relationship with Harry Potter and I admire him as a character and I believe he, and the series as a whole influenced me heavily and shaped my own reality. While I feel strongly about this, I admire him as a character and I admire the moral fiber of the books and what they teach. I do not find myself trying to become this character or live as if I were stuck inside the book. As the article states, “…Besides the attractiveness of a character, the development of a parasocial relationship may depend on the perceived commonalities between viewers or readers and a media protagonist… (Schmid 255). This is a good way to describe how I find myself connected to Harry Potter. I find common things in common with the character and the story and that is how I became attached to the character and the story. There are some who may identify a great deal with this story and it may cause a stronger connection, or obsession to form. Some people like the idea of not having any limits within a relationship like this where they are entirely in control of the outcome and the benefits because it is in their own head.
The benefit to fictional PSRs is that there are multiple people who feel the same way and identify with a character and a community forms based around common interest, this is homophily. The article defines homophily as, “homophily…implies a sense of closeness to and familiarity with the character, a relationship characteristic that facilitates uncertainty reduction and positive experiences of shared group membership between viewers/readers and character. This is where things like fandoms are bred from. People find common ground within a fictional world or with a specific character and people discuss this and they form different scenarios that fit their reality or may be more of how they see it in their heads. This could be a great way to form real life connections and relationships, unless those involved in the community see the fictional story as their own reality. That could be seen as an obsessive behavior and it can be more hurtful than it seems.
Parasocial relationships and homophily that are formed between a fictional character or a celebrity/artist can be positive or they could be negative and unhealthy. Some of the benefits are that people can bond with one another over a relatable character, or they can be sucked into the fictional world they have become so fond of to the point where they believe it is reality for themselves.

I had this in a document with pictures but it won’t upload to here so here are the superlatives and who they go to. any suggestions are appreciated. 🙂

*Most Likely to win the house cup…
just by breathing
Harry Potter

*Most likely to kick
your butt in a duel:
Hermione Granger

*Most likely to show
up late to a fight:

Neville Longbottom

* Most likely to
Third Wheel Himself:
Ron Weasley

*Most Likely to have his
Father hear about this:
Draco Malfoy

*Most Likely to Break Hearts:
Cho Chang

Most Likely to Listen
To some band
“ you’ve never heard of”:
Luna Lovegood

Lowkey Savage:
Ginny Weasley

*Most Likely to Apprentice
for Rita Skeeter:
Collin Creevey

*The one who should’ve been
Sorted into Slytherin:
McClaggen

*Most Likely to be
sent to Azkaban:
Lavender Brown

*Top Chef
Gregory Goyle

*Attached at the Hip
Paravati and Padma

*Best Hair
Mrs. Norris

*Sass Masters
Fred and George Weasley

*Most Likely to burn
down the classroom

Seamus Finnegan

*He doesn’t even go here
Lord Voldemort

*Most School spirit
Moaning Myrtle

*Next American Idol
Fat lady

*Best Backhand
Severous Snape

*Most Popular
Albus Dumbledore

My remix idea is to do a Hogwarts Yearbook with superlative pages. I plan on creating something resembling a book probably a poster board and decorating it like a yearbook and then I will read a few of them out loud or maybe turn it into a game and just read the “most likely to..” statement and have the class guess who it belongs to. I think it is a fun, creative (and possibly comical) way to label a character and what they are like. For instance, I used the example of “Most likely to have their father hear about this” for Draco Malfoy and while that isn’t his main characteristic or his true “claim to fame” in the book, it comes up in a lot of the dialogue he has between Harry and it is a mannerism that separates him from other characters. I plan to use the main characters such as Harry, Ron, Hermione, Luna and so on but I also want to touch on villains and lesser background characters that may have been mentioned or featured in the books or films.

Teaching children is a challenge, especially when you need them to retain and apply the information you teach them. Many teachers have developed creative ways to engage students in all disciplines to help them retain more content and be able to use it further down the line. In the article “Harry Potter as a context for Interdisciplinary Studies” by Tisha Beaton, there are many examples of how this can be done specifically using Harry Potter and the wizarding world. While there are plenty of useful examples and clearly beneficial activities that were created, I would like to add to the list of possible exercises and explain why they would be effective for students. This will be a beneficial exercise for myself as I can apply it to real life so all my future students can all retain and apply what they are taught.
The methods applied in Beaton’s article allowed students to think creatively and make their own projects for a given subject that personally fit their thinking and learning style. The author states that, “…For some students, responding to Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone filled a need for self-expression and the desire to record their thinking about the world. As Harry Potter’s world mirrors our own, the meanings they derived from the literature…”(Beaton 102). Students that were asked to think critically and creatively had more of a desire to repeat back information that they had learned or share opinions which they formed from the content they were taught. Not only does this ensure that the students remember what they have learned, it also motivates them to remain engaged when doing future assignments within other disciplines. If I could create another exercise that could require the student to think and respond in a similar way I would ask the children to read a description of the four houses of Hogwarts and answer which house they would belong to and why. This will allow students to think about themselves on a personal level while also having to support their opinion with information that they were given.
Another great approach that was taken was related to mathematics. Using Harry Potter as a concept for math is a great way to engage students who are not able to think logically as easily as others. Numbers do not always connect with students, and sometimes creative thinking can be a good way to get students to apply the topic and fully understand it. When discussing budgeting activity presented to a group of students Beaton explains that, “…Each student was assigned a character from the novel and given a different amount for his or her budget..” (Beaton 100). The use of pretending makes the activity more appealing and also encourages the children to think in a different way. The activity was successful in the classroom and the students fully understood how to budget and had a real-life way to apply the concept even though they learned it by using fictional characters. The concept that everyone has a different budget and needs to split their money differently was easy to understand, and the use of familiar characters helped promote enthusiasm and made it more likely for the information to stick with the children. If I could suggest a similar exercise for the students, I would have used Gringots Bank as context. I would use the concept of simple math and apply amounts to different Gringots coins and have the students add them or subtract them to make change. I would ask them to pick a student (Harry, Hermione etc.) and they would all have a different set of coins but would buy the same objects with different coin amounts. This would allow the students to come up with many potential answers to the same problem while understanding how to successfully do simple math.
Scientific thinking is another way to incorporate Harry Potter into the classroom in a way that is relevant. The author discusses many different categories of science, but one in particular was used to explain a complex topic in a simple way. The article states that “…The second topic was a study of matter, which drew on laboratory experiments to prove science concepts that related to the three states of matter. The students equated this to potions class…” (Beaton 100-101). Using the idea of potions allowed students to understand that when one substance is modified or mixed with another, it changes into something else or has a new effect. While potions are fictional, it gets the point across clearly and it excites the students making the students want to learn more about science. If I could develop a new activity that could be used in a similar way, I would give the students a list of “potions” and what needs to be mixed together to create that potion. The students would have to follow directions, pay attention to order and understand cause and effect. It also gives them hands-on learning experience and makes it a fun activity while teaching them a more complicated concept.
All of the methods used to apply Harry Potter in the classroom engaged, and excited students to learn and retain the concepts presented to them. Across all disciplines it was very effective to use the familiar wizarding world of Harry Potter. In addition to what was provided I was able to think on my own on how to expand of create more activities that could be effective for students. This is a real life situation for myself seeing as I am looking to pursue a career in education and it helped me to think about the types of students I may have in the classroom and how to appeal to all of them so they can walk away learning as much as possible.

The social issues and atrocities that have occurred in this world have striking similarities to the happenings in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. A large parallel that has been drawn between real life and this magical world compares Nazis and Hitler to Voldemort, Death Eaters and the Ministry of Magic. There are many similarities between the two and it is no surprise that the author wanted to make a point out of such a grave period in history. The ideas of, social and racial ideals, propaganda, and rise to power can be seen within the two worlds and happened in very similar ways. Racial and social ideals in Nazi Germany were the driving points of the holocaust, and the same can be said about how purebred wizards felt about mudbloods and phasing them out of the Wizarding World. Both can be connected to a term mentioned in the reading Was Voldemort a Nazi?. When making a comparison between Nazis and Death Eaters the author states, “…The term “social death”… used to describe the position of slaves in a civil society, but this term is also useful in analyzing the position of Jews and other “racial undesirables” in Germany during the 1930’s” (Reagin 142).  This real world example connects strongly to the term “Mudblood” (a wizard with one or two muggle-born parents) and how they are viewed in the wizarding world. Both the Nazis and The Death Eaters (and many Ministry supporters) used propaganda to encourage a purification within their world. Both groups want to keep “purebred”/Aryans the dominant race and they form reward systems for people who support this propaganda. There are several examples of Nazi propaganda from a website titled “High Style of Nazi Propaganda (1925-1930)”. When comparing these images to Ministry of Magic propaganda (found on google), they two are remarkably similar. There was one poster that stood out to me in particular, it was a poster of a hand holding a sword in the air and a phrase that translates to “Germans, For You!”. There is an almost identical image for Ministry propaganda and it says “when muggles attack” and there is a wizard holding a lightning bolt in a stabbing position. I think the two send the same exact message that violence is the solution and that people should praise those images.  Another parallel I was able to draw was the one between the power of German Dictatorship and Absolute power in the Wizarding world. In the article Magic is Might the author mentions that, “The Minister ruled with more independence and authority than any Muggle Prime Minister…” (Liedl 154). This quote could also be used to the way Hitler had complete control over his audience and his followers. He was not following any constitutional rules and he was simply running off of pure authority and power, much like the Minister of Magic does. Both “rulers” gained their position and their following through propaganda and spreading ideals that other people would idealize for themselves. To further support this, the author then states “Without the political freedom enjoyed by witches and wizards in governing their increasingly isolated community, ambitious and charismatic Muggles rose to power….” (Liedl 162). This example of a rise to power is exactly how Hitler gained his power during the Second World War. He used his charisma and his outstanding public speaking skills to get people on his side, and several Prime Ministers both magic and muggle did the same. All of these ideas of social and racial ideals, propaganda and rise to power were highly visible in both Nazi Germany and the Wizarding world where the extinction of mudbloods is still on the rise and used as means for justice.