i was reading the slashdot article about powerful magnets,
being in old hard drives, and i remembered a full height
at&t scsi 240 meg drive i have. i decided i gotta have
those magnets. it took about 20 big torx screws before
i got to where the magnets were. they were inside the
actuater i guess it's called, that holds the drive heads.
i couldn't figure out how to get the thing apart to get the
magnets out. it took me 20 minutes to figure out that
the part i needed off to get the heads off that thing was
not actually welded, it was just held on by the magnets.
i was prying on it with a really thick screwdriver, and i
saw it move.
the magnets were so strong that they had screw holes
on the opposite side of the metal where the magnets
were, so you could work screws in the get the magnets
off. there was a drop of glue too. i actually twisted one
of the screws in half trying to get the second magnet off.
there's 2 of them. they're about 1.5 inches long and 1
inch wide. maybe 1/6 an inch thick. very powerful.
several times they've slipped and smashed my fingers.
I held them about 8 inches from the front of my tv
and the images changed purple and green, but would
change back when i pulled them back to a foot. I moved
the magnets 4 inches away, and the area of the screen
went whiteish, and didn't recover fully when i pulled
the magnets away. i turned the tv off, then back on
and it was the same. i thought i hosed my tv, which
is about worthless anyway. the picture was purple
and yellow and green on 2/3's of the screen. when
i held the magnets 8 inches away on the opposite corner
from where i had before the picture would look fine, and
when i pulled away, it would go back to crappy, which
i thought was funny. i held the magnets where the
screen looked best for about 10 seconds, then pulled
the magnets back, and the image stayed good. i think
it looks better now than it did before. I"m going to put
these in my pocket and walk past all the tv's in some
store i don't like. I'm just kidding but i'm really tempted.
i guess i have a new floppy disk eraser.

Cool - so science really can be fun, eh?

Dude.....yer not kiddin.

The magnets inside a regular IDE drive are strong as heck.

I took 2 of them out of an old 6GB Drive. They are so strong that if I hold them about 1 inch apart they slam together and pinch the sh*t out of my hand. Usually leaving a blood blister on my hand.

Good magnets

i let my mom play with them, and she ended up breaking
a chunk off. i can make the little piece jump around,
holding the original magnets 6 inches above them.
at 3.5 inches the little piece flies up and sticks to the
big one.