MacGyver Season 2 Episode 14 Science Notes: Mardi Gras Beads + Chair

Breaking and Entering Through a Window

Don’t break into people’s houses. Oh sure, there are lots of ways to get into someone’s house. Think of a locked door as a social norm. People agree to not go past that locked door (or window) — even though they probably could.

In this case, MacGyver gets in through a window. In some cases, it’s possible to use the friction between your hands and the glass to shake the window up and down. This can slowly force the window lock into the unlocked position.

Detecting Metallic Ink

Here is another one that seems crazy, but it turns out to be not so crazy. MacGyver builds a detector to find some hidden cash. Yes, it’s indeed possible to detect the change in magnetic fields due to metallic ink in US currency.

Metal detector knows how much cash is in your wallet

But you have to be pretty close-and really it would only work to determine how many bills are in a container. However, there’s still a chance this could work.

In this case, MacGyver uses a hall effect sensor along with a speaker to create an audio-based system to search for the money. In the show it works like a metal detector-but it’s not a metal detector since the hall…