Kicker - Face-magnet experiment gone wrong

NICK EICHER, HOST: An astrophysicist at Melbourne University in Australia was recently hospitalized for reasons related to the coronavirus, but it’s not what you may think. 

Twenty-seven-year-old Daniel Reardon did not contract the virus. No, he got magnets stuck in his nose! 

Reardon and his research partner wanted to do their part to stem the spread of the virus. So they set out to design a device that would sound an alarm when a person’s hand approaches his face.

He was experimenting with magnets for the device. He put one on the outside of his nose and another two on the inside. But when he removed the ones on the outside, guess what happened?

AUDIO: [Magnet click]

Click. The little magnets inside snapped together, nice and tight. Probably didn’t feel great, either. 

I’ve got a little rare-earth desk toy and so I recorded what I imagined it sounded like in the poor guy’s head.They’re pretty grabby!

And they don’t like to let go!

But back to our astrophysicist friend: He didn’t rush to the hospital. Instead he used another magnet to try to draw out the stuck ones. But that just made matters worse. That one got stuck too.

So he hustled off to the doctors, who did manage to get the magnets out and had a good laugh at Dr. Reardon’s expense. 

For his part, he says he’s done with face-magnet experiments. But it’ll be awhile before he lives this one down!

REICHARD: I’m afraid it’s, ah, gonna stick, so to speak.

EICHER: It’s The World and Everything in It.

(Photo/Daniel Reardon)

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