You know that little button on your monitor that says Degauss? When you press it your monitor goes click worble worble worble chunk. What does it actually do? What is it meant to do?
well, i always thought that Degauss removed the magnetic imprints you get when you hold a bar magnet to the screen or when the same image is projected onto the screen for too long- in other words, it clears the screen of any electromagnetic funky stuff.
I am not all that sure how it DOES that, though…
you need an expert on monitor projection systems to answer that.
of course, i could be wrong.
You’re right, it has to do with magnetism. Herewith…
Basically, your monitor, and your colour TV, for that matter, uses a Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) to create the pictures you see on your screen. It works by aiming electrons at your screen by creating magnetic fields inside the CRT. The electrons hit a phospor coating on the screen, it lights up, and you get to watch your favourite Windows programs crash, or surf through the best message board on the planet.
Sometimes, external magnetic fields, like the Earth’s natural magnetism, a magnet held close to the display, or certain brilliant operators nicknamed after punk rock stars who are gifted with magnetic personalities (sorry, I can’t help myself :rolleyes: ) will bugger that up by magnetizing the shadow mask, which is a perforated sheet of metal inside the monitor that further focusses the electron beams and absorbs electrons that are headed towards the wrong colour phosphor. This causes image deformation and distortion of colours.
Degaussing works by realigning the magnetic field in the CRT to compensate for external magnetic influences. Most monitors will automatically degauss when you flick 'em on; your monitor is one of the models that are also equipped with a separate degauss button, which does a more thorough job of it. Those who are really bad off can get external degaussers as well. Here’s an example I found on the net.
Hope this helps…
Thank you so much donnie rotten. It really did help. 
Holy Cow!!!
$99.00 for an outdated piece of ancient memoribilia???
Now where did I put that old degausing coil???
All it really is is a coil of wire and a mechanical switch.
Sometimes the coil is only wrapped in electrical tape.
Sick, isn’t it? :eek:
I didn’t go “pricing” degaussing coils, this just happened to be the first hit on Metacrawler. So, there may be cheaper ones out there. Nowadays, you’d have to be living inside an atom smasher (or other, big magnetic-field inducing equipment) to get to a point where you’d need one of these.
Course, if you could make 99 bucks selling a coil of wire and a mechanical switch, wouldn’t you do it, too? 
I just may be in the wrong line of work after all…
I don’t think his personality is all that magnetic. Although he was pretty damn cool on Judge Judy. hahaha