Uses for strong (rare earth) magnets?

[Roger Mills]

It's a bit heavy to carry in a pocket!

[Roger Mills]

The destructions tell you to keep compasses a reasonable[1] distance away from it.

[1] Something like a couple of metres, I think - haven't currently got it to hand, so can't check

[Roger Mills]

So that it rotates the generator when a car passes over? You'd need a busier road than mine for that to work!

[Bill]

In message , "dennis@home" writes

I have a vision of a cyclist being held to the spot by your magnet :-(

[Alan]

In message , Roger Mills wrote

Keep away from plastic cards with a magnetic strip, although chip and pin should be OK.

[Graham.]

Note to myself: Don't put my mag-stripe car park ticket in my shirt pocket next to my Blackberry. There is a magnet in the leather case. On two occasions up to now I have been delayed while it was sorted.

OK, I didn't have to pay, but that wasn't my intention.

[grimly4]

To recover huge coins from the bottoms of drains.

[DavidM]

I've still got one of those from my days as a narrow boater. Bought it for the kids to use for fishing for dropped sluice gate handles/keys around the canal lock gates. Amazing how many get dropped into the lock, the kids found enough to sell on and suplement their pocket money somewhat.

[Gib Bogle]

Iron coins? They'd be a bit rusty by now.

[Andy Burns]

All our 'coppers' have been copper-plated steel rather than bronze for ~20 years

[Gib Bogle]

I didn't know that. In fact my ignorance extends to our own currency (NZ) - I just discovered that our 10c, 20c and 50c coins have also been plated steel since July 2006. The $1 and $2 coins are aluminium-bronze.