What does “normal” mean?

Honestly, this a great physics joke. MacGyver and Jack are in a trash compactor—yes, there are some Star Wars jokes here too. In order to break the hydraulic pump, Mac wants to put a pole so that it pokes through a particular screw. Here’s the important part.

MacGyver: …if I hold the pipe perfectly normal.

Jack: Dude. Nothing about this is normal.

Jack messes up and hurts his arm. According to MacGyver: “I used a technical term that Jack didn’t understand.”

Ok, so what does “normal” mean? In short, it means perpendicular. That’s it. MacGyver needed the pipe to be perpendicular to the wall. That’s what normal means. That’s also why physicists call the force a surface pushes on an object “the normal force” —because it’s perpendicular to the surface.

Yes, we also use “normal” in geometry—but of course Jack wouldn’t get that.

What is a spectrometer?

Not a MacGyver hack, but I want to talk about spectrometers anyway.

My first idea of a spectrometer is a visible-light spectrometer. This is essentially a prism. Light goes into the prism and is then separated into different colors. By looking at the colors in the light you can identify the light source. Oh, but this kind of spectrometer wouldn’t be found in a chemistry lab—at least probably not.

There is also a mass spectrometer. This takes a gas of molecules and shoots them into an area. Using magnetic fields, the path of the molecules is bent. Based on the amount of particle deflection, you can get a value for the mass of the particles.

Also, it’s just fun to say “mass spectrometer”.

Origin of Hacking

Come on. We know that MIT didn’t really invent hacking. Humans have always been able to creatively figure out problems—which is the essence of hacking.

However, MIT might indeed have invented the word “hacking”. The history of this stuff is really interesting. Let me recommend the following book—Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (Steven Levy). I liked it.

Door Alarm

Another non-MacGyver hack. This is a hack from his friend. She creates a door alarm. You can’t really see it very well, but it would be a small battery with a buzzer. The circuit runs to a clothes pin with aluminum foil on the pinchers and a piece of paper between them. Since the paper is an insulator, there is not a closed circuit. The paper is then attached to the door (with tape) so that opening the door pulls the paper out.

It’s actually a pretty simple design. You can (and should) build one of these yourself. Here is a video showing how to do that.

Electric Whip

In order to make an improvised weapon, Mac takes an extension cord and cuts off one end. Then he strips the wires on that end and plugs it in to the wall outlet. Note: DON’T DO THIS.

When the two bare ends of the wires touch someone, they will get shocked. Oh, and it’s a whip.

So, would this work? I think it would mostly work. It wouldn’t make the lightning stuff, but that just makes it look cool. It does look cool, right?

DIY Centrifuge

This might be the best hack in MacGyver history. Basically, this is a real life MacGyver-hack. It’s a low cost and simple to build centrifuge.

What the heck is a centrifuge? It’s a super high speed spinning thingy. You can put liquids in there and the high rotation rate causes a centrifugal force (yes, I used that term correctly) to separate liquids of different densities. This can be used to process blood.

Here is a real centrifuge.

And here is the DIY version. It’s basically just string and cardboard. However, with this simple version people can process blood stuff in more rural areas. Awesome.

It’s real.