Turn over a Magic 8 Ball and ask it if Heath Hunnicutt and Dan Egnor of Seattle put their schooling to good use.
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The probable answer: “VERY DOUBTFUL.”
The two California Institute of Technology graduates, apparently letting curiosity get the best of them, dissected a Magic 8 Ball and detailed the operation at their site: the Unofficial Magic 8 Ball Page (ofb.net/8ball).
Hunnicutt and Egnor’s site is not the first dedicated to the fortune-telling ball made famous by Tyco Toys. But Hunnicutt and Egnor’s is the only known site that has gotten to the core of the matter: finding out exactly what is inside the creepy black-plastic ball.
They came up with the idea a year ago when they found one of the balls in a break room at Microsoft Corp., where they work.
On their image-intensive disassembly page, Hunnicutt and Egnor take visitors through the step-by-step operation as if it were a delicate medical procedure.
Hunnicutt and Egnor first drilled holes in the ball to drain the fluid. When that move came up dry, they used a rotary tool to perform a craniotomy on the ball. Eventually, they found the answer device and the fluid cylinder deep within the ball.
Their page also covers other Magic 8-Ball minutiae. Egnor rates and reviews 38 sites about the Magic 8-Ball or some form of it.
But even Hunnicutt admits they can’t top the dissection page.