Physics makes me go stupid… XD Formulas like those aren’t my friends.

@Andra: I agree! When I first saw this clip, I was dumbfounded and tried to do it myself… Needless to say, I had the same results as the host… XD

This is the same phenomenon as hooking up a coil of wire and a light bulb. If you pass a magnet through the coil, the resulting change in magnetic flux produces an electromotive force in the opposite direction (Faraday’s law of induction). This translates into a current in the presence of other circuit elements in a closed circuit. So the light bulb, a resistor, gets an opposite and equal voltage difference to balance the inductor’s electromotive force (Kirchhoff’s voltage law). A voltage difference across a resistor means there is a current across it (Ohm’s law), and the light bulb lights up accordingly.

You can replace the bulb with a capacitor, which instead of dissipating energy, builds up charge across two opposing but non-touching surfaces. This is the case with Miya’s fingertips. When they’re close enough, they act as opposing surfaces holding opposite charges. If they’re brought too close, the charge can leap across the gap due to the low relative static permittivity of air.

As to how Miya actually manages to do this, I don’t have a satisfactory answer, but this is a result of her amazing ability to manipulate magnetic properties … the same ones that let you levitate frogs, for example.