[nighterfighter]

You're right, I didn't really give any reasons.

To begin with, the radio was already in a very poor condition, could only pick up about 3 channels, all of which were covered with static. Anyway, it wasn't like we just tore the thing apart. We actually spent around an hour with it, looking through some of the wiring, and trying to figure out what a particular part was. (After we removed it, the radio still worked, which had us really confused)

One of our other members kept the case to use in a future project (he is going to install one of his mini Mac computers I believe inside of it)

As for the magnet, it may be a "silly" reason, but we want to know what the force in the center of a magnet is.
We know that there is a north and south pole, and if the magnet is broken in half, it forms 2 new poles. But what will the force in the center be?

So yes, we didn't just tear the radio apart for the heck of it.