On 17 Mar 2005 06:18:20 -0800, Tim Shoppa wrote:

I've worked in mnay labs with large superconducting magnets and there
are interesting stories to tell.

Invisible force tends to be forgotten, yes.

One day a grad student started yelling from the vicinity of the magnet.
We run in and see that Kenny had carried in a regular steel toolbox
which was now stuck to the side of the magnet. He was still yelling
and screaming about being stuck. We knew what was holding the toolbox
to the magnet, but we couldn't figure out what was holding Kenny to the
toolbox :-).

?

Maybe you had to know Kenny to appreciate the story. The point is,
folks who don't work around big magnets a lot don't really understand
at a gut level what happens (despite many years of schooling as to
electromagnetism...)

We had an agency tech who we called "Wild Bill", because if you heard
3 words from him in a week, you wondered what got him so chatty all of
the sudden. Great tech, nice guy, just liked working and not socializing.
Well,...he came over to me, looking at his shoes, and said "I just did
something really dumb." 6 words. 2 weeks worth of communication, all
at once, which of course got my attention.

Seems that he was doing some up-close and personal work on a new magnet.
We had those library-type stools, which roll when you're not on 'em, and
don't roll when you're on 'em, and for the magnet areas, we used fiberglass
ones. Well, somehow one of the steel ones from the component build areas
got into the magnet part of the building, and of course that's the one he
grabbed. Took 4 people to get it off the magnet.