MIT Physics Demo -- Magnetic Deflection of a TV Image

An cathode ray tube (CRT) television is connected to a video camera. When a strong magnet is brought close to the television screen, the image becomes warped and discolored.

While many new televisions use flat screen technology, older CRTs produced images by firing electron guns (one red, one green, one blue) through the television body onto the back of the screen. When a magnet is brought close to the screen, it deflects the paths of the electron beams and distorts the picture. A strong enough magnetic field can even create a hole in the electron beams, causing a black spot on the picture.

This TV has been subject to many magnet encounters, which has permanently damaged the picture.
See original video on MIT TechTV - http://techtv.mit.edu/videos/691

Category:

Education

Tags:

• mittechtv
• physics
• mit
• demo
• demonstration
• tv
• television
• warp
• distort
• disturb
• magnet
• magnetic
• field
• electron
• beam
• crt
• cath

[bonecrime]

I think it's gonna need some degaussing! :P

[SpitsBeaTz]

So that's where Salvador Dalí got his inspiration for The Persistence of Memory painting.

[dickcheney6]

Why ruin the tv

[shaneshanon]

Would that destroy your TV?

[ManganistanDraselny]

You are deformating the reality :D

[mathfigure]

Interactive display! :P

[captkirkconnell]

carefull doing that on any screen- had a TV a while back we played with that and an image was burned in that took several weeks to go away- depends on the type of screen and strength of the magnet.

[TopGear6666]

@infoherper Oh you hurt my feelings!!!...... When's the mother ship coming back for you?

[MrJWM29]

Sorry MIT, you're about fifty years late. Albert Roy Davis and Walter Rawls studied magnetic fields using this method a long time ago and wrote about it in their first book, "Magnetism and Its Effects on the Living System", in 1974.

[gammypoofle]

Hm. Not to mention that the magnet can also bend the steel wire mesh inside the color CRT, which is what you re-shape using a degaussing coil.

[ScrewAttackChina]

this is why you have a degauss button