There’s a scene in the most recent Avengers movie where all of the film’s heroes are winding down in Stark Tower, and after a few drinks, they all take turns seeing if anybody can lift Thor’s hammer. As the legend goes, the hammer, otherwise known as Mjolnir, can only be lifted by those who are worthy of its power — so naturally everyone gives it a go. But after Iron Man, War Machine, Hawkeye, and Captain America all fail to make it budge, Tony Stark offers up an explanation:
“The handle is imprinted.” he says, snarkily suggesting that “whosoever carries Thor’s fingerprints” would be able lift it. This scene gave YouTuber and DIYer Sufficiently Advanced an idea. What if there really was a way to use technology to build a hammer that only one person could lift? Well as it turns out, there totally is — and that’s exactly what he did.
To make Mjolnir a reality, Sufficiently Advanced used a set of extremely powerful electromagnets, some batteries, and a fingerprint sensor built into the handle. With only a tiny bit of programming, he was able to make the fingerprint sensor act like a switch — so the electromagnets will only be turned off when he (and only he) grabs the handle and places his thumb on the sensor.
To be fair, the hammer is only “unliftable” when it’s sitting atop a ferrous metal of some sort, but that doesn’t make it any less entertaining. Once his high-tech replica was complete, Sufficiently Advanced took to the streets of Venice Beach, Califonia to confuse passers by — and the results are hilarious. Even though it only works on manhole covers and big sheets of steel, it’s still pretty funny to watch people struggle to get it off the ground.
