A student who said it was done by magic would, of course, have been correct. Because it was done by magic.
The teacher moved the plate when the audience wasn’t looking. That is one of the ways magicians perform their tricks.
If they had used words such as “supernatural,” “miracle,” or “paranormal,” then they would not have been discussing physics.
But good magicians are the best practical physicists.
If Richard Feynman can say:
What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school… It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don’t understand it. You see my physics students don’t understand it. … That is because I don’t understand it. Nobody does.
then it may be strange to the point of being beyond understanding.
(Nobel Lecture, 1966, The Strange Theory of Light and Matter)