MacGyver Book Sample 2 -- Knock Out a Lights with Glass Cleaner

How to Turn Out the Lights with Formula 409

As Seen in Episode: 64 – Obsessed. Recurring nightmares about Murdoc make MacGyver sleepless and on edge as he provides security at the criminal trial of a deposed dictator.

What You Need

• A light fixture with a standard light bulb
  
• Formula 409
  
• Gun-toting thugs
  

What You Do

1. Wait until the thugs are underneath the lightbulb.
2. Brandish Formula 409 bottle in a threatening manner.
3. As the thugs are paralyzed with laughter at your ridiculous ploy, spray Formula 409 on the light bulb. Use liberally.
4. Watch as the glass from the imploding bulb falls into the faces of the thugs.
5. Run past blinded thugs.
6. Rest.
7. Run some more.
8. Have a beer and laugh about the dumb thugs and their plastic surgery bill.

Why It Works

Most lightbulbs are made of soda-lime glass. The Formula 409 window cleaner contains the chemical sodium hydroxide (NaOH) a corrosive chemical that reacts with the glass on the lightbulb. Because the glass in a light bulb is extremely thin, the NaOH eats through the glass very quickly. Then, because the inside of a light bulb is a vacuum (the complete absence of air) the outside air instantly rushes in to fill the vacuum, causing it to implode, the glass to shatter, and fall on the thugs.