Fringe Society

There are a whole host of senses beyond the typical five, including heat, pain, and balance. But sometimes that just isn’t enough. Perhaps you want to enhance your own perceptions to take in more of your environment and interact with it in a unique way. Or you have some vision of the future that you would like to see today and augmented senses are integral. Or you just think it would be cool to sense the world a bit differently from everyone else.

There are a number of different ways to manipulate your perceptions, with some suggestions being a bit more permanent than others. Let’s stick to something temporary that doesn’t involve much time or money and yet allows you to quickly experiment with forces that you normally would not think twice about.

We’re going to sense magnetic fields and EMF.

You only need two items: a super strong/rare earth/neodymium magnet and a nice tight glove (latex, vinyl, nitrile, etc.) The magnet should be small enough to easily fit inside the glove. You might think that the larger the magnet, the better, but that isn’t always the case due to the increased mass. I found a set of four from the ‘Superstore That Must Not Be Named’ for around four dollars. Stacking two of those seemed to work the best for this application.

There’s not much to the assembly. Put magnet in glove finger of choice, put glove on hand, adjust magnet to desired location. I found that placing the magnet on a fingertip worked well. How do you know it’s working? Wave your hand near a strong magnetic field (laptop charger, CFL base, etc) and feel the vibration!

Happy Experimenting!

NOTE: Steer clear of CRTs, TV, computers and other expensive electronics. Magnetic objects may fly violently at your hand. Avoid credit cards, hard drives, and other magnetic materials. There may be a number of warnings, but being able to feel a live wire (without getting electrocuted) is still pretty exciting.