Magneto boy

As we close out a week of hardware-related posts on this blog, here’s an arti­cle from Sci­en­Cen­tral about a 12-year old boy who calls him­self “Mag­neto Man”. Joseph Fal­ci­atano III of Rich­land, NY claims that his mere pres­ence can dis­rupt elec­tronic devices, includ­ing video games and com­put­ers. The link above has more details, includ­ing a video inter­view with teach­ers, the boy and his father. 

I’m a bit skep­ti­cal about this report, but one detail is inter­est­ing: when Joe is grounded, the effect dis­ap­pears. That actu­ally makes sense. When repair­ing a com­puter, it’s a good idea to wear an anti-static wrist strap, and to con­nect the strap to a fixed piece of metal. Some elec­tron­ics work­benches include a long metal strip for that purpose.

I have a metal desk in my office, so I touch the desk and ground myself after I walk across the carpet.

Thanks to Engad­get for the link.

Tagged as: electricity, hardware, new-york, power