Flatpack furniture may be easier to get home than the already built variety, but getting to grips with fiddly screws, hex keys and "simple to follow" instructions can soon eat away at your free time, and your patience. Designer Benjamin Vermeulen aims to remove the hassle from this chore with his range of magnetic furniture which simply snaps into place, no tools required.
Dubbed Magnetic Assisted Geometry, (or MAG), Vermeulen's furniture line currently consists of a chair, a table, and a cabinet. The furniture looks attractive and is made from steel and wood, snapping together during assembly thanks to carefully placed powerful magnets.
Assuming the furniture remains as structurally sound as one would hope, this idea offers real benefits: no more worry of losing an essential screw during assembly, while also allowing far easier disassembly should you wish to move or sell the furniture. Additionally, replacing parts should be easier since there's no need to unscrew anything first.
We've currently no word on availability or pricing for the MAG furniture line, but will let you know as soon as we hear back.
The video below shows some furniture being assembled.
Source: Benjamin Vermeulen via Dezeen
Now I'm off to invent some easily-snapped-together latches.
Paul
There's a Mythbusters episode on that. They tried all kinds of permanent magnets, stationary and in motion, none wiped the cards. So their next try was with an electromagnet. They kept cranking up the strength but it wouldn't erase the cards.
They were placing the cards on the magnet, turning it on, then turning it off to remove the card to pass through a reader to see if it'd been affected.
Then one time they forgot to turn off the magnet before removing the card. Bingo! Data wiped.
From there they stepped down the magnet strength, each time moving the card through the field, until it stopped erasing the data.
This was a magnet at some distance from the cards during the moving tests. In a card writer, tape recorder or floppy disk drive the heads are in contact with the media so the field can be a high enough gauss without needing a lot of electrical power.
So your credit cards will be safe around this furniture. On the other hand, some cell phones can generate a strong enough, fluctuating magnetic field to corrupt the data on magnetic stripe cards such as credit cards and hotel room keys.