From the Large Hadron Collider department of Tool of the Week comes the Telescoping Magnet, or magnetic pickup tool. Regardless of automobile make or model, there is always at least one fastener in a difficult if not ridiculous location. Getting to that bugger often requires ingenuity in action. After putting a box end wrench into a vice and using a sledge hammer to bend it into a crows foot, pegging the swear-o-meter, twisting a screwdriver into a 73-degree angle with a set of vice-grips, and cursing whoever or whatever company was responsible for putting the fastener in such a ludicrous location, you finally crack that nut or bolt loose.
Celebrating in this moment triumph and victory, you forget that as hard as it was to get to the fastener, it will be equally if not nearly impossible to fish the damn thing back out of there. This realization is particularly sinking after dropping the nut or bolt. Enter the miracle of the Telescoping Magnet pickup tool! The telescoping section of this Tool of the Week is much like the telescoping antenna on old radios, or the fully electronic telescoping antenna on the Starion. The difference is a small and powerful magnet is affixed the end of the telescoping section instead of the usual Jack-in-the-Box or Mooneyes antenna ball. Just set the tool to the right length, and go fishing. The bonus useful warning of the week is that no matter how supergenius of an idea it seems at first, never use the Telescoping Magnet pickup tool to fish a smart phone out of an unreachable place or anywhere near a computer. Powerful magnets do all sorts of undesirable things to data stored on magnetic media.
Had many a FUUUUUUUUUU… moment go to not so bad, actually on account of a decent magnet-on-a-stick. The only tricky part being that magnetic attraction is proportional to the mass of metal nearby. The mass of a section of frame is significantly greater than the bolt dropped inside of it. Workaround is to just drag a magnet on the outside of the offending cavity; it’ll usually drag the fastener along. Magnetism FTW.
If I were a poet, I’d write an ode to the telescoping magnet. But I’m not a poet.
Your chances of actually doing any damage to a modern computing system with a magnet are very low. The only widely-used magnetic medium that remains are hard drives, the floppy and MO and Zip having gone the way of the dodo, and hard drives have very powerful magnets contained inside their cases!
Which is to say, unless your magnet is unusually powerful or you open up the case of the hard drive, you should be good.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/116572/busting_the_biggest_pc_myths.html