MythBusters Q&A: Mythsion Impossible, Super strong magnets

Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman describe an upcoming MythSion Impossible episode. Clip from a live MythBusters event to benefit Encinal High in Alameda. More info at:

http://kwc.org/mythbusters/

Approximate transcript:

Adam: "Jamie has always been fascinated by magnets. You might have seen it on the show and he's got all this collection of super magnets and he likes to do all this stuff with them. I found these magnets for him on this Web site that are the size of hockey pucks. And they are so powerful you would never want to be holding onto one in each hand... you would be in danger of loosing one or both of those hands... On the package it says, 'if you are carrying this package from one room to another, it's wise to plan your route around any metal objects.' And Jamie promptly decided, 'I want to build something to climb a building with these magnets.' We're doing a special ... which you'll see in about three myths called Mythsion Impossible... all these heist myths, and the first thing we had to do is climb into a metal duct and up and down into this building to break into a building and Jamie's magnets worked a treat."

Jamie: "Yeah, and to back up a little bit, I told the producer I had these magnets and I had figured out how to accomplish this task... and wanted to do it as part of the show. And he e-mails me back... Jamie, how many times, after all these years of doing this show you still don't know what this show's about. This show is not called 'Jamie and Adam Build Weird Shit.'"

Adam: "I beg to differ"

Jamie: "But to his credit, he came back with... he heard a story and had fallen it through that someone had broken into a house using these magnets... and I imagined to figure this out, and when you think about it, what I was able to do with this is quite something because climbing ducting with these magnets, ducting is like you know, a 1/32nd of an inch thick, it's really thin steel, and to have a magnet that would support a person's weight on that kind of steel is quite something. I managed to make it up like twenty feet in three minutes.

Adam: "It was not quiet. Kung! Kung! And I got to build something that I've wanted to wanted since I was like five.Which is that I got to take suction cups and power them with a battery-powered vacuum pump.. (*makes climbing motion and suction noises*). It was so cool."

Jamie: "I think we're going to do it in Petaluma or something"

Adam: "Yeah, we're going to climb a twenty story building"

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• mythbusters
• encinalhigh
• adamsavage
• jamiehyneman
• mythsionimpossible