3 ms·

I've had this kind of thing happen to me when I was graduating in physics. I was working with a liquid helium based refrigerator that had a superconducting magn

I've had this kind of thing happen to me when I was graduating in physics. I was working with a liquid helium based refrigerator that had a superconducting magnet inside it, pretty much the same technology used in MRI. The setup could reach fields up to 13T and the old CRT display that accompanied the setup would visibly skew above ~6T (it was pretty close to the magnets). I was sitting on a small wheeled stool of which two varieties floated around the labs: one with metallic wheels (red) and one for use near these setups (blue). Unfortunately, one of the wrong ones had found its way into this lab, but do you normally pay attention to the color of stools? I sat down, probably around a meter from the setup, cranked up the magnetic field, stood up to adjust something and BANG, the stool collided with the fridge. Luckily nothing was damaged, but the reason for these two types of stools was suddenly very clear to me :)

retube 16y ago
13 Tesla? That sounds a lot. would make it just about one of the most powerful magnets in the world. I would have thought 6T would vaporise a TV set, not just distort the image. E.g the ATLAS magnet is 4T and requires 21,000 amps to power it.... http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/spotlight/SpotlightATLAS-en.html http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/spotlight/SpotlightATLAS...
- Confusion 16y ago
  In 2001 it would have been a world record, but by 2005 those kinds of superconducting magnets had become pretty regular pieces of equipment, at least for the kind of nanophysics lab I was in. You should realize it creates that field only inside a small space with a diameter of a few cm. The entire thing is suspended in liquid helium, including the samples on which we did measurements. I believe we estimated that, at a meter from the magnet, the field had dropped to something like 3T. I'm not sure how much power it drew, but I seem to recall it was plugged into a regular socket.

retube 16y ago

13 Tesla? That sounds a lot. would make it just about one of the most powerful magnets in the world. I would have thought 6T would vaporise a TV set, not just distort the image. E.g the ATLAS magnet is 4T and requires 21,000 amps to power it.... http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/spotlight/SpotlightATLAS-en.html http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/spotlight/SpotlightATLAS...

Confusion 16y ago
In 2001 it would have been a world record, but by 2005 those kinds of superconducting magnets had become pretty regular pieces of equipment, at least for the kind of nanophysics lab I was in. You should realize it creates that field only inside a small space with a diameter of a few cm. The entire thing is suspended in liquid helium, including the samples on which we did measurements. I believe we estimated that, at a meter from the magnet, the field had dropped to something like 3T. I'm not sure how much power it drew, but I seem to recall it was plugged into a regular socket.