MacGyver Season 3 Episode 3

Transparent Explosives

Yes, this is probably real –

Liquefaction of Sand

This is real.  You can make a simple version of this yourself.




Or you could make a crazy huge version like this.


Weather balloon pop

MacGyver needs to get a thermal camera down from a balloon.  The balloon (it’s not actually a weather balloon) is tethered down by multiple lines.  So Mac uses the jumper cables from the car and connects them to the car battery.  Then he connects ONE cable to the wire and the current causes the balloon to burst.

OK, let’s step back for a moment.  Remember that this is a show – this is not real life.  I just want to make sure we are all on the same page there.  So, there’s a small mistake here (you can blame me if you like).  In order to get an electric current from the car battery to go through the balloon, you would need to make a complete circuit.  One jumper cable connected to the line is a start, but there needs to be a path for the current to get back to the battery to make a complete circuit.

One way you could get this to work is to take another line going to the balloon and connect the other jumper cable to that one.  If you look close, it seems like the other cable isn’t connected to anything (in the show).  Of course, that mistake is better than connecting both wires to the same line.

This is sort of the same problem as this double spark in Iron Man 3.

Thermal camera

Yes.  Thermal cameras are indeed real.  Yes, the heat signature of an electric car would be different than an internal combustion engine car.  Actually, I need to see how hot they get in real life (electric cars).  I’m going to test this the next time I see a Tesla.

Oh, and here is an overview of seeing stuff in infrared (also called “thermal image”).

Just for fun, here is a visible and infrared image of me with a bag over my head.

X-Rays from a Vacuum Tube

MacGyver needs to find the transparent explosive.  One of the tools he needs for this is a source of x-rays.  This seems to be real – but it appears you can make x-rays from a vacuum tube, a lighter (the long kind) and a diode.

Here are the instructions from (I need to build one of these).

There are so many cool parts of this hack, I could probably write a book on just this one thing – maybe I will write a separate post.  This x-ray device does the following:

  • Uses a vacuum tube from an old radio.  Historically, the vacuum tube was used where transistors are used now.  These things are awesome.
  • The lighter has a piezoelectric in it.  When you apply a pressure to these devices, it produces a voltage – the voltage can get high enough to make a spark in air which lights the gas from the lighter.
  • When you connect the piezoelectric to the vacuum tube, you can make a super high voltage inside the tube.  This can accelerate electrons such that they crash into the other electrode.  This crashing electrons is exactly how you create x-rays.
  • X-rays are just like normal visible light except that they have super small wavelength.  This can make them interact differently with matter.  For instance, they can pass through some materials (like human skin).
  • What is the x-ray used for in this hack?  X-ray fluorescence.  This is essentially the same as glow in the dark (kind of) material except get’s “activated” with x-rays instead of other visible light.

Oh wait! I already have a video on x-ray fluorescence.



One final note.  In the show, MacGyver says something about shooting ions.  That’s not really what happens here.  X-rays are not ions.

Hydrogen balloon from a trash bag.

Can you fill a trash bag with hydrogen?  Yes.  Will it lift stuff?  Yes.  Could it lift a trash can?  Maybe…just maybe.

Here is my super short introduction to buoyancy.

Suppose you take a box of air – the box is 1 meter on a side such that the volume of this air is 1 x 1 x 1 = 1 m3.  Assuming there is no wind or breeze, this “box of air” will stay in the same location.  Since the box is at rest, the total force acting on the air must be zero.

OK, there is obviously a downward gravitational force on the air puling it down.  Yes, air has weight.  If something has mass, it has a gravitational interaction with the Earth.  Everyone likes to think of air as being weightless – but that’s probably because it has a low density and it’s normally “floating”.  But if there is a downward gravitational force on the air, there must be an upward force pushing to counteract the weight.  This upward force is the buoyancy force.

Since the box of air floats, we know the buoyancy force has to have the same magnitude of force as the weight of the air.

Now let’s suppose I take away that “box of air” and replace it with a sealed cardboard box (it could be a box made out of anything, but in my mind it’s a cardboard box).  The air around this box is going to interact with it in the same way as it did with the box of air (because air is dumb and doesn’t know any better). This means the cardboard box has the same buoyancy force as the box of air – it is equal to the gravitational weight of the air the box displaces – this is essentially Archimedes’ principle for floating stuff.

Oh, this buoyancy force is still the same no matter if the object is floating or not – it just has to displace air.  You can also do this with water or really any substance –  like pudding.  Not sure why you would float something in pudding.

But what if you want to calculate this buoyancy force?  In that case, you need to know the density of the air (which is around 1.2 kg/m3) and the local gravitational field (9.8 N/kg).  With that, the buoyancy force would be:

F_\text{buoyancy} = V_\text{object} \rho_\text{air}g

Finally, we are getting somewhere.  Now you can calculate the size (solve for V) of a balloon needed to lift a trash can.  If you want a simple estimate – you can ignore the mass of the hydrogen in the balloon (but it does indeed have both mass and weight just like the air).  I’m leaving the rest of this as a homework assignment for you.



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