Thanks to BoingBoing for this great video of Mr George the SuperMagnetMan, vendor of all manner of high quality, super-powerful magnets. As he demonstrates in this video, these magnets aren't toys! Or rather they are toys, albeit ones powerful enough to crush your puny, fleshy fingers. The money shot is around the 3-minute mark...
So perhaps you've watched the lime getting pulverised into the beginnings of a good pie, and you're still not convinced these magnets are dangerous. Lucky then, that someone out there was unlucky so you don't have to be stupid. Here's the aftermath of Dirk's encounter with a couple of large neodymium magnets.
Yes, that is Dirk's fingernail. The rest of his fingertip is slowly congealing between the magnets. Dirk works in a lab with x-ray medical equipment, which probably came in handy:
These magnets jumped 50cm to inflict their attack on Dirk, so I can only echo Mr George's sage advice:
The problem you run into handling these magnets is making sure you keep two magnets far enough apart that this can't happen. And far enough apart tends to mean three or four times the distance that you think
Truer words never spoken.
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I really want some of these the same way I want a Tesla Coil. And I really don't want them for the same reasons I don't want a Tesla Coil ...
Fuck! Seriously, just fuck! Dude, I was cringing so hard looking at those pics...
Double-fuck!
Reminds me of the first time I had an MRI. The doc tried to reassure me by holding up her car keys to demonstrate the magnetism. The machine yanked the keys right out of her hand, she screamed, I screamed.
Frasque, I had an MRI tech tell me about the time a janitor left a steel folding chair in the MRI room. Unnoticed by the MRI staff, it remained in the room while they powered up. The chair evidently flew across the room like Superman late for a date with Lois Lane and stuck itself to the machine. Fortunately there wasn't a patient in it at the time.
@speedwell - not only is that true, here's the video.
Ohhh God! That must hurt! I had a big super-magnet! Once it lock on doors and I had to pull it with my friend to take it off! That magnet was the first thing I scared so much!
wow well those things are pretty strong. I heard him mention that they are N40 grade magnets. I looked around online and i was able to find some N50 and N52 grade which are much more powerful, which of course i bought the N52 grade last night and are on the way now :)
HOLY SHIT!!!
I started to collect hdd magnets long time ago and found that you can have fun with them as long as you don't treat them like toys.
There are YouTube videos showing things getting sucked into an MRI machine from across the room, like office chairs and oxygen bottles. The latter is REAL dangerous as if it falls into the MRI bottleneck first, it might break off and if full, it'll act like a rocket and reach the magnet's escape velocity and fly through a wall.
Firstly, Mike Webster's comment is excellent. I so know where he is coming from. It applies to so much more than Nos and Tesla coils !!
Secondly, i once bought some large Neo magnets from a magnet factory in England. They make magnets but not the Neos, they import them from China. The guy I was talking to had recently been to the Chinese factory. He said there several workers there with missing fingers, most of which had been severed by pressure rather than impact !!