These magnets from United Nuclear Scientific Supplies are a little like gremlins — seemingly harmless, even cute, but capable of serious mayhem. Their combined pull force is 800 pounds, meaning they’ll try to tunnel through pretty much any sorry thing that comes between them — furniture, walls, interns, designers. (United Nuclear refused to send us its most powerful pair, which has a total pull force of 4,000 pounds.) We have found, however, that just one of these magnets is all kinds of useful: When the managing editor threatens to cancel Rock Band practice, respond by waving the cylinder of rare earth metal 12 inches from his MacBook. One inch closer and his hard drive is toast!
I need a set of these magnets. Sidenote: United Nuclear is owned by a guy named Bob Lazar, an interesting character whose claims of working with Edward Teller at Los Alamos and at Area 51 has gained some dubious attention.
I can’t begin to imagine how dangerous these could be.
A co-worker has a small set of magnets from an old hard drive, and has to constantly warn people of the hazards – while still enjoying playing with them.
The ones he has are fairly small… maybe 3/4-inch long, and 3/8-inch thick.
One of his friends was holding one in the palm of his hand, palm-up, while moving the other one around underneath – to see how much pull the magnets had as they got closer together.
Of course, he got the 2nd one so close to his hand that the force got too strong for him to keep the magnets apart… so he had these two, small magnets causing him a lot of pain as they squeezed his hand between them.
Tough part was getting them apart, since they had sunk into the soft tissue, and it was hard to get a grip on them, or get leverage to pry them apart.
Heaven help you if you do something that stupid and the magnets have sharp edges.
I notice the one in the photo, above, has nicely beveled edges… coincidence? I think not. 🙂
When working in Saudi Arabia at a communications site we had to replace a magnatron on a high power microwave system. These things use STRONG magnets to control the RF energy. The magnetic field is so strong that it is imossible to work on the assembly with anything but bronze tools.
One of the guys tried to smuggle the old magnet on our plane going home. Luckily we found out and made him leave it behind. No telling what might have happened had he brought it on board.
That particular magnet would hold on a flat steel surface with over 600 pounds of force, imposible to remove without causing damage.
“One of the guys tried to smuggle the old magnet on our plane going home. Luckily we found out and made him leave it behind. No telling what might have happened had he brought it on board.”
Glad you found out.
Unless the plane was navigating with GPS, the field from that magnet would have thrown their compass -way- off.
Hopefully they would have noticed, even before takeoff. But, it would have been a significant delay while they tried to figure-out what was causing the interference.
I’ve got a bunch of the small ones, .5 inches square, and a few of the 1-inch types. That size is pretty damned powerful, but lots of fun. The smaller ones do the thing with one in your palm and the other on the back of your hand real well. Two stuck together are hard to pull apart. The inch-sized ones are trickier, don’t get between two of them close to each other.
Bigger than 1 inch square and you have to be REAL careful to have fun with that.
Iv had a few GOOD magnets..
And scared a few people with them.
Dealing with people when you are in an electronics section was so much fun.
Person comes in and asks “WHT am i seeing all these strange colors on my NEW TV”.
I ask “Where are your speakers/FANS/TOASTER, and any other electronic/magnetic devices?”
To many were placing SPEAKERS on both sides of the NEW TV.. THOSE 12″ Sub woofers can kill a TV..
HUH?
These were on Mythbusters. Four of them could support one person hanging from a wall.
Also, if you put your hand between two of them when they came together, you’d lose it.
Perfect for free energy turbines.
I was building ribbon speakers with these things.
Interesting thing to try is cornflakes. Because cornflakes have small amounts of iron, when you put it in water it will get attracted to magnet (must be floating on water surface).
These magnets were developed for Appolo missions, and used ever since. Now every earbuds has them and many loudspeakers. They can be also found in hard drives.
TSA:Hand over your laptop for searching.
Passenger:No way, I read on dvorak.org that this is unconstitutional.
TSA:Well I read on there that this magnet will kill you laptop.
This could make one heck of a spring, with axial containment of the magnets by a non-ferrous tube, like kevlar.
With graphite, one could do some cool room-temperature levitation tricks.
i betr they could strip the iron right out of your blood…..
I saw an over-unity power generator using these puppies. They’re also used in brushless high efficiency electric motors, these magnets are changing the world.
one of my favorite pasttimes is to take the magnets from defunct hard drives and seeing how many throws it takes to get it to stick to the support beams of the false ceilings in my office. takes a bit practice, throw too hard and it bounces off. have to throw with enough force that it stalls close enough to the beam that the magnet attraction pulls it up the rest of the way.
@MikeN
Your “humor” is bogus. You KNOW that TSA employees can’t read.
Heh, this would be quite useful for wiping your credit cards in a hurry. 😛
The invention of the neodymium magnet was great for the Chinese toy industry, because impregnating toys with lead and sharp metal was getting boring and repetitive.
A little kid swallows a neodymium magnet or two and he’s guaranteed to lose at least a foot of intestine.
Very cool! Although also dangerous. I wonder if there are any practical applications for some sort of magnetic elevator.
These things are fun. I would like to get some massive ones and see what I can come up with for them. I wonder how they ship these giant magnets? I can see UPS having some problems.
Crap, I didn’t think about UPS. Think about the new Lenovo Lappy in a box with the magnet box on top of it. Oh, the lulz!
Two 800 lb neodymium magnets would crush your hand to a pulp if you got it between them. I have kids now which is the main reason I don’t have my super strong magnets anymore. I have a few that would hurt but nothing that would cause permanent damage.
You know – it’d of been pretty amusing if he suddenly realised he was leaning over a metal desk >:D
Neodymium comes in various grades. In fact, grade 52 is the strongest. Careful with it.