Read the whole article because it’s hilarious.
An officer then allegedly pulled a sealed emergency release button that shut the MRI machine down, deactivating it, evaporating thousands of liters of helium gas and damaging the machine in the process. The officer then grabbed his rifle and left the room, leaving behind a magazine filled with bullets on the office floor, according to the lawsuit.
The shutdown did have to happen (because the cop is a dumbass) but it obviously should have been done by someone who knows what they are doing. The guy should be suspended for being a dumbass and also for leaving his loaded magazine.
The mechanism they are describing here is the emergency one (like if a human is trapped against the machine by something metal and is being crushed - you need to kill the magnet NOW). There is a slower, much safer mechanism for deactivating the magnet that should have been used here but that would require the officer admitting he had made a mistake and asking for help.
Also I just want to point out that the rifle should be considered no longer safe to use unless thoroughly inspected by an expert. In a similar case some years back, the police officer’s sidearm was pulled into the machine. After retrieval it was found that the weapon had been magnetized by the scanner and as a result the firing pin was able to spontaneously release.
Also I just want to point out that the rifle should be considered no longer safe to use unless thoroughly inspected by an expert. In a similar case some years back, the police officer’s sidearm was pulled into the machine. After retrieval it was found that the weapon had been magnetized by the scanner and as a result the firing pin was able to spontaneously release.
Something tells me he won’t know that.
well i mean to be fair, if a rifle is ripped out of your hands, and into an MRI machine (which is going to be very loud) and you have no idea on how dangerous/bad for the machine it is. You’re going to hit the (probably) very big and very red button marked “E-STOP”
in fact the operator probably doesn’t even care about this, they probably only care about the raid itself lmao. The damage is just a function of the raid.
The machine is only loud when it is actively scanning a patient which it doesn’t seem like was happening in this case. Otherwise it’s relatively silent. Also the big button is (in my experience at multiple hospitals) always in a different room behind a box that you have to open. My point being this wasn’t some knee jerk reflex where he had the gun pulled out of his hands and he slapped the button. He physically had to leave the room and find the button to do this.
An officer then allegedly pulled a sealed emergency release button that shut the MRI machine down, deactivating it, evaporating thousands of liters of helium gas and damaging the machine in the process.
Everything was fine until dickless here shut off the containment grid.
To give some background on this, the huge magnetic field in an MRI machine is created by a superconducting magnet. A magnetic coil submerged in liquid helium that keeps it ultra cold has virtually no resistance, so the electricity can keep going round and round and round like a racetrack without being bled off by resistance. This lets the machine maintain a very high magnetic field with very little power input.
An MRI technician can gradually ramp up or down the magnetic field power by slowly adding or removing current from the magnet. To retrieve the officer’s rifle, they could have slowly ramped down the power with a magnetic power supply while the magnet stayed cold.
When the guy slams the emergency button that does what’s called a quench. It adds resistance to the magnet, which starts turning that power into heat, and that heat boils off all the liquid helium and rapidly ramps the magnet down to zero. This should only be done if for example a patient is trapped in the machine by a metal object or similar emergency, because it damages the magnetic coil and also boils away the liquid helium, which itself is worth thousands of dollars.
LAPD (or more specifically, the California taxpayers) are in for a pricey repair bill.
You don’t have to quench a magnet if it isn’t an emergency, field engineera can ramp it down slowly. Jfc what a moron.
He probably shit his pants at the deafening sound of an MRI machine being quenched, and had to leave quickly to change them.
Yeah, I can imagine someone thinking it’s entirely electrical shitting their pants too a sound of Smaug roaring.
MRIs are entirely electrical right? They just use liquid helium for cooling im pretty sure.
Obviously there are a bunch of mechanical parts as well, that goes without saying i think though. Most people wouldn’t be able to tell you the difference between mechanical logic and solid state logic anyway.
