I’m going to change up my posts on MacGyver hacks.  I’m going to limit the focus on things that I can significantly talk about.  So, suppose there is some hack involving a belt that loops around a pole and something happens.  It might be a great “hack” – but if there’s no fun science to discuss, I will just skip it.

Also, I’m not going over any of the chemical explosions.

Radio Squeal Device

MacGyver does something to a radio to such that it creates a high pitched squeal – a type of sonic weapon.  Is this plausible?  Yes.

Since a radio has both a microphone and a speaker, it’s possible to set up an audio feedback loop.  Here is a short video showing this.

Actually, this demo leads to some interesting questions.  In particular, what does the feedback frequency depend on?  I think that the frequency of the squeal depends on both the audio properties of the speaker AND the mic.  If you change either one of these, the frequency should change.  This would make a great science fair project.