If this is real what is the explanation for why this works?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CV9nS_5kYgM&feature=player_embedded
The first clue that there’s something wrong is that the magnet sometimes “saves” a number and sometimes “restores” a number. How is it supposed to know which?
If you watch closely, every time the magnet is placed next to the calculator display, the hand pauses and stays still for several frames. I’m guessing that the actual pause was considerably longer than that, and the other hand came in and entered the number (this part was later edited out). To make sure the calculator didn’t move during that time, it was probably attached to the table, and the camera mounted on a tripod.
It would be pretty easy to create a video just like that where the “storage device” was a rock, or a Valium, or a duck skull.
Does it work? This video would be trivial to fake.
Calculators don’t have much shielding. A strong magnetic field could could effect the circuity. I doubt you’d get such predictable results like the video shows.
At most a magnet would introduce random pulses into the chips.
The same poster also has a video “how to play defender on a calculator”, which is clearly fake, so I would assume this one is faked also.
Why do you say it is clearly faked? Programmers put Easter eggs into products all the time. Excel 97 has a simple flight simulator, which requires a convoluted sequence of keystrokes to activate. It wouldn’t surprise me at for a calculator to have a little fun.
Good luck trying to get a 7-segment calculator display to show the kind of resolution required by a video game like Defender.
Oh, good point. I wasn’t paying attention. My daughter has a graphing calculator and I didn’t notice the one in the video is a bare-bones model.
Not to mention the guy who posted the video says “This video is for fun. Just practicing my editing skills” in his description. I think this adequately explains both.