MYTH: CAN AN ELECTROMAGNETIC WATCH REALLY DEFLECT A BULLET?

Finding: BUSTED

Explanation: Before James Bond sets out to fight drug lords in Live and Let Die, gadget guy Q arms him with a double-duty watch. The theory was that the time piece could emit an electromagnetic field strong enough to divert a bullet heading toward 007.

Although Bond never puts the high-tech trinket to that use in the movie, not-so-secret agents Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage built their own prototype to see whether Q's spy science holds up in the real world.

Wrap a copper wire around a steel core, then run an electric current through it, and you have an electromagnet. That flowing current creates the temporary electromagnetic field, which could theoretically repel an electrically conductive object— like a fast-moving steel bullet — because of opposing electron movement.

Since theirs had to fit inside a watch, the MythBusters used a pretty tiny electromagnet. To compensate for its size, they amped up the electric voltage to produce the most powerful electromagnetic field possible. But when they fired a gun repeatedly at a fake arm wearing the gadget, the bullets didn't budge from their original course. Even when they pumped up the power by using a magnet that wouldn't fit in 007's timepiece, it didn't deflect bullets in the slightest.

As seen in "MythBusters: James Bond Special I."

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