MacGyver Season 1 Episode 2 Hacks

Rhett Allain
4 min readAug 6, 2018

Now I’m excited. This is an episode that I fully looked at before they started working on it. Actually, it’s sort of funny. I remember getting this script and I remember reading it. I was on my way to give a workshop in South Africa and I had a 9 hour lay over in Paris. I sat in a lounge chair and read this script.

Oh wait. I even have a picture of where I was sitting.

Photo: Rhett Allain.

Ok. That has nothing to do with MacGyver or science — it’s just one of those things that comes to my mind. I don’t know why. Now for some science.

Episode 102 Metal Saw Siphoning Gas

(Plausible, fluids, pressure)

A siphon is actually pretty cool. The basic idea is that water (and most fluids) don’t really compress that much. If you get a fluid in a tube and the fluid moves down — it would leave an empty space after it moves. This empty space would have a region of lower pressure. That means the far end of the tube will have a region of higher pressure due to the atmosphere. This higher pressure pushes the fluid.

But here’s the trick. You can get this siphon flowing by itself — but there can be no air in the tube AND the end point must be lower than the starting point.

Gasoline Draino and Fertilizer

(Plausible, chemistry, explosive)

Ok, let me get this out of the way. The general rule for bombs is the following: any two or three chemicals mixed together can potentially explode. The details don’t really matter too much.

Why? Well, first — bombs are dangerous and no one wants to encourage bomb making. Second, you don’t want to train people how to make real bombs.

Ignite Alcohol with Cigar

(Plausible, fire, burning)

Really, there are two questions here. First, can you light alcohol on fire? The answer to this one is — yes. Often, the idea is that alcohol over 100 proof will burn — but that’s not always true. The important thing to realize is that it’s actually the vapors that ignite — not the liquid.

Now for the second part. Can you light it with a cigar? Probably. You really want an open flame — not a smoldering bit of tobacco. However, if you suck in air — you can probably…

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Rhett Allain

Physics faculty, science blogger of all things geek. Technical Consultant for CBS MacGyver and MythBusters. WIRED blogger.