Tablecloth Weights

Explain how a magician can pull a tablecloth from under a table set with china?

This is a science question that I have to answer. We've been studying Newton's laws of motion or whatever, and weight and mass and speed and motion, so I'm guessing it has something to do with that? The second question is: In reality, the china will probably shift slightly in the direction of the tablecloth. Explain why. Can anyone help with this? I have no clue.

Inertia! Inertia is a property of matter, and an object at rest tends to stay at rest until acted upon by an outside force. Inversely any object in motion will tend to stay in motion until acted upon by an outside force. So those were the basic laws of motion pertaining to the tablecloth and place settings trick, there are a couple more requirements to really 'pull it off'' so to speak! lol :p The magician attempting this trick must pull on the tablecloth very hard and fast from the very beginning to allow all the objects on the tablecloth to utilize the stationary table set, china plates, glasses and the flatware's normally resting inertia to NOT be overcome by the friction of the now swiftly accelerating tablecloth pulled by Mr.Magician man with a powerful YANK! You see earths gravity is pushing downward on everything involved in this stunt identical in every way to the acceleration of 32ft. per second per second against the somewhat slippery, usually silk or nylon tablecloth for low low friction. And we are now concerned about the friction, or hopefully a lack of it between our tablecloth now being pulled by Mr.Magic and the objects still staying mostly at rest while the tablecloth finishes nearly all of it's travel out from beneath the table settings, glasses, ETC. Those items not moving too terribly much because the usual force of gravity was insufficient, and the tablecloth was moved too swiftly to possibly allow enough frictional forces to overcome the resting inertial properties of the whole kit and kibootle once placed on top of the now fully removed tablecloth! If this was done correctly, although some of the less massive objects like the flatware may have moved a tiny bit with the cloth in the same direction,(remember, less heavy objects have less resting mass, and resting mass is central to this trick working) but most everything else (heavier, with more of the needed resting mass) should still remain upright and close to their original positions and standing tall and proud.I hope this explanes the physics behind the stunt we all have seen done, but probably never tried for ourselves.

---