On 17 Mar 2005 08:50:08 -0800, jim rozen wrote:
In article , Boris Mohar says...

I wonder what would happen if the bullet went through the coil causing it to
go open.

The real excitement happens when the round penetrates the vacuum
jacket for the heilum dewar. Those are thin, a 9mm round would
go through. At that point all the liquid in the dewar rapidly
changes to gas, one liter of liquid turns into a suprisingly
large volume of STP helium gas....

It'd come out as a "flame", looks _just_ like, say, a propane
flame, but it's white rather than blue. Inner cone & outer
zone and everything. Similar hazards, too.

When you fill a superconducting magnet, you need the inner cone (where it's
still liquid) to be into the fillport, you do not want to put a bubble
of warm helium into the bottom of the cryostat...