Destroying Electronics With Electromagnets

Electronics get their name because they function by storing electric charges in the form of electrons. These charges dictate the opening and closing of pathways for currents through circuits. Processors store and move charges between different transistors to run calculations and compare values. Disk-based hard drives use the presence or absence of an electronic charge on individual sectors of a spinning magnetic disk to store and retrieve files. The precise positioning of these charges is what electronics control.

Computers run programs, but programs also run computers. Programs regulate the opening and closing of circuit gateways and interpret the presence or absences of charges in transistors or other storage media. These hardware-level programs are stored as electrical charges, in the same way as files, on hard drives or memory chips attached to the device's circuit boards.

Magnets exude a magnetic charge: either positive or negative. Positive and negatives charges are attracted to one another, while positive charges will repel other positive charges and negative charges will repel other negative charges. The magnetic force in electromagnets has been amplified by an electrical current. When a sufficiently powerful electromagnet gets near a piece of electronic equipment, it will affect the electrons in the transistors and memory sectors of hard drives and memory modules.

When you expose a piece of electronic equipment to a powerful electromagnet, it can rip away the collections of electrons that constitute the programs which run the device's circuitry. Without the code for the program in the circuitry's storage, the device will be unable to function properly. While the physical circuitry will be intact after exposure to an electromagnet, the effect of the electromagnet will render the device useless. This makes electromagnetic exposure a popular method for deleting sensitive electronic data.