There aren’t a bunch of hacks in this episode—so that means I can just write about whatever I want.

Smoke Grenade, Oxygen Mask, Sticky Whips.

This is just classic MacGyver stuff. I really don’t have anything to add.

High Voltage Power Lines

Now we are talking. Why are these power lines high voltage? To answer this question, we need to first think about three things: power, voltage, current.

Let’s start with power. This is the rate of energy change (or in this case, energy loss). For an electrical circuit, the power loss is equal to the product of voltage and current.

But wait! There is also a relationship between voltage and current.

Where R is the resistance (in Ohms) of some element. Substituting this definition into the power definition:

So, here is your answer. You get more power loss with a greater current. That means the best option is to have low current power lines. But if you want to transmit power—you have to make up for this with high voltage. Boom. There’s your answer. OK, technically these power lines are alternating current and voltage, but the main idea still works.

Next question. What happens if you touch a high voltage line. The answer: not much really.

Yes, if you touch a high voltage line AND something else—like the ground then you will get zapped. The thing that really messes up humans is an electric current running through them. If you just touch one line and nothing else, there is no complete circuit. With no complete circuit, there is no electric current. Oh, this is why those birds can sit on power lines. As long as they only touch that one line, they are fine.

Belay from a lock

The key to a belay is friction. This is actually a pretty cool thing—the more turns a rope has around something (like a post), the greater the friction. You can control the amount of friction between the pole (or padlock in this case) and the rope by slightly varying the amount of rope around the pole.

I think I need to do an experiment to show this—maybe I will do that later. In the meantime, here is a nice tutorial on belays.

Oh, but what if MacGyver wanted to express his anxiety about heights by calculating the impact force if he fell. His calculation might look something like this.

Motorcycle Jump

MacGyver and Desi need to jump a fence with motorcycles. Here’s what he might calculate to find the minimum motorcycle speed to make the jump.