Hold on. There’s a metric butt ton of science in this episode. It’s going to be great.

Turning bullet

SPOILER ALERT. This episode has a bullet that can turn. It’s sort of the key plot element in this episode. These dudes are trying to steal the technology for these “smart bullets”. These bullets are essentially tiny guided missiles with fins so that they can turn in flight.

I’ll just leave this Wikipedia link on smart bullets and then move on (it’s not really a MacGyver hack anyway).

The physics of birthdays

Again, not a hack—but MacGyver thinks birthdays are dumb. Well, not dumb but arbitrary. I think he is right. In fact, I use the following phrase on people’s birthday’s:

Happy Solar Orbit Day.

Yes, that is the day the person completes another orbit around the Sun. I like thinking of it that way.

Fixing a generator inverter

There are lots of different types of generators. Most of them involve a gasoline engine that turns stuff. Some times this turning stuff involves a magnet to make an electric current. But what happens when the magnet get’s messed up? Yes, you have to fix it.

A permanent magnet is a ferromagnetic object (like iron) in which all the magnetic domains are aligned. If the domains are not aligned then it would just act like a dumb piece of metal. You can get the domains align by applying a strong magnetic field.

This is exactly what MacGyver does to the generator. He uses a defibrillator to generate the current and forms a loop of wire to create the strong external magnetic field. Seems like it could work.

DIY sand blaster

How do you get people out of a collapsed building? What if you could just cut through the wall? Yes, that’s the MacGyver plan.

In this case, he uses high pressure water mixed with sand—a type of sand blaster. If you have water at a high enough pressure, it can pretty much cut through anything. Of course MacGyver’s water by itself isn’t fast enough. That’s where the sand comes in. When the sand hits the concrete, the abrasive interaction is enough to eat away at the concrete.

Oh, this would take quite a while to work.

Seeing through walls with radar

Yes, this is a real thing. NASA made this device. Here is a description. Basically, this thing sends out microwaves and detects the reflected microwaves. But the magic is that it only looks for variations in reflections caused by small oscillations—these oscillations are from a human heart.

For MacGyver’s version, he starts with a radar gun (from a police car). These don’t use the same frequency as the microwave detector, but he can make a modification. With some software from Riley, that’s pretty much what he needs to get started. It’s at least plausible.

Screw jack

How do you lift super heavy stuff? You need a simple machine. All of the simple machines deal with force and distance. If you can increase the distance over which you apply a force, you can get a greater output force over a shorter distance.

In this case, MacGyver makes a screw jack. You can lift a large mass by turning the screw to get it to extend. In fact, you could do something like this yourself. Here’s how.

Ascender rig

The goal of an ascender rig is to allow some device to move UP a rope, but not down. This means you can climb up a rope one little bit at a time. Here is an example.

Oh, MacGyver made an ascender rig to climb an elevator cable and escape a collapsed building.

Modify laser

The smart bullet is aimed using a laser. Of course the bullet is only a little bit smart. It only aims towards the brightest laser. If you could make another laser that gets the attention of the bullet, you can get the bullet off course.

MacGyver takes the laser sight off a pistol. In order to increase the power output, he burns off a potentiometer. This could work on some lasers—like this.

Oh, DON’T DO THIS. You don’t want a powerful laser without knowing what it can do. These lasers can seriously damage your eyes in ways you wouldn’t be able to predict. Remember, you only have two eyes. Don’t mess them up.

So, they use this powerful laser to redirect a smart bullet. That part is plausible. It’s unlikely they could get a bullet to turn all the way around. They wouldn’t have time to move the laser dot and the bullet fins couldn’t make it turn that much.

Who cares. It was still a great episode.