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MRIs
Far too many movies and TV shows use the magnet to cover for their lazy writing by treating it like something that can be turned on and off like a light.
The magnet in an MRI is one of the coolest things in medicine, and writers get it wrong all the time. In the vast majority of cases, it’s always on.
In simple terms, an electromagnet works by running a current in a circle and creating a magnetic field. In an MRI, the current is flowing in what is essentially a closed loop of wire. However, in this case the wire is cooled with liquid helium so it becomes a superconductor.
They induce a current in the wire which creates the magnetic field (“ramp up” the magnet). Because it is superconducting, the current doesn’t stop. Once it’s ramped up, it no longer requires any external power. As long as the current is flowing the magnetic field remains.
There are only two ways to “turn off” the magnet.
One way is to “ramp down”. Essentially the opposite process that is used to get it running in the first place. That’s what they do if they need to stop it for service.
The other way is to quench the magnet. You hit the emergency stop and vent off the liquid helium. Without the helium, the wire warms and resists the current and the flow stops.
Quenching a magnet is a magnificently dramatic process. Someone hits the panic button, and there is a loud roar as the helium escapes. Clouds of condensation form around the exterior of the building as the cold gas escapes. In the event some construction crew screwed up and accidentally sealed the vents, there could be an explosion from the rapidly expanding gas.
If writers want to use an MRI as a plot device, have an accident and require someone to quench the magnet to save a life. You’d have the immediate drama from the accident and the quench, and then you’d have the long term drama of the hospital trying to figure out where the money to fix the MRI would come from.
I’d actually love to see a rapid ramp down portrayed in a movie like that. Sounds dramatic!
That is insanely interesting never knew that
I used to install and maintain MRIs (as well as some other medical imaging modalities) and this seems to be wrong any time I’ve ever seen it in media.
- people will be shown in the magnet room with steel wheelchairs/patient tables/chairs/etc. or even their phones. None of that should be entering the room at all.
- the images shown on the diagnostics will be like a radiogram or PET or something that would not show from an MRI.
- the scan only takes a minute for a “picture”, when in reality having an MRI scan can easily take an hour. You may have some people taking only 15 minutes or so, but those are the quick ones. Clinicians will order a whole list of scans and each one takes several minutes.
Years ago where I work a resident decided to be helpful and move a patient into the room with the MRI.
Of course, the patient was supposed to be transferred off the ferrous metal gurney before coming into the room. The resident didn’t know that.
The MRI pulled the gurney into the room and it slammed into the scanner. Luckily it didn’t actually flip up and crush the patient.
They told the patient to stay where he was and they loaded the gurney down with a bunch of full five gallon water bottles. Once they had enough weight on it, they transferred the patient off the gurney. A bunch of guys pulled the gurney out of the room, amazingly without any damage to the scanner.
Yes I had two separate occasions of having to remove a ferrous table from a magnet. One was able to be removed with 5 of us pulling (using a tie strap for safety to make sure it didn’t fling when we repositioned it), but the other we had to ramp down the magnet to remove from the room.
How about small things like paperclips and staples? My guess is that it won’t be too hard to pull but not so easy to get a good hold.
Unfortunately they did get in the room sometimes. For the most part, techs are really good about keeping the magnet room clear and not bringing ferrous items inside. However, even when things like that did get inside they really aren’t a problem to just pick up with your hands (or sometimes our titanium tools like pliers or a screwdriver to get a better grip on them). The pull is strong, but based off the amount of ferrous material so those things that are just a few grams are not really notable.
I had an MRI recently for a Kidney stone, and I don’t remember it taking very long.
For a kidney, they probably used the body coil and it would have taken around 15 minutes. Does that sound right?
If any of the detectives from Law and Order come in to my bar I absolutely will not remember that random patron from five days ago.
I have facial blindness so I’d be a cops worst nightmare as a witness. Yeah I know the guy left literally 3 minutes ago but I could not pick him out of a lineup.
I worked in toxicology. Likewise, if any detective showed up in my lab for results, let alone talked to anyone anywhere near their samples, they can say goodbye to their case.
Hobby: Skydiving
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Free fall is at most 65 seconds on a normal jump. My personal record is jumping from 28,000 feet and I was in free fall for around 85 seconds. That’s it, there is no such thing as a 5 minute free fall, unless you are looking to break an altitude record.
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If you run up to a skydiver and pull their Pilot Chute (PC) out and throw it into the wind, nothing will happen. The gear is designed to work at free fall speeds. A 10mph wind will not pull the main out. If you pull on the PC bridle hard enough to actually pull the main out of its compartment… You will just have a main parachute in its deployment bag closed by rubber bands, or other method and it will just be laying on the ground. You will also get a well deserved punch in the mouth by more than one jumper. If you pull the reserve handle you will probably get murdered and there will be no witnesses, especially if the hanger was full of jumpers. They will just hide your body and you will have deserved your fate.
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BASE jumping and Skydiving are as related as Hockey and Figure Skating. Sure there is some overlap, but one cannot do the other without training. Also BASE is an acronym. Building, Antenna, Span, Earth. Bridges fall under Span BTW. No, I am not a BASE jumper, although I have jumped the Bridge in WV. So yeah, I guess I have my S.
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Yes, wing suites are cool. Wish I had more jumps on them.
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You cannot talk in free fall. The old movie trope of talking back and forth is simply not possible. How difficult is it to talk in a car with the windows open going down the road at 70mph? Now, remove the windshield and drive the car 120mph…
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The “parachute not opening” is not even in the top 10 concerns when jumping. The gear works and we jump with two chutes. There is a whole lot of bullshit that can happen before we get to deployment altitude. Not the least of which is just getting to the DZ in the morning. I always considered my drive to the DZ my most dangerous part of the day. Second most dangerous is being in the airplane. I’m actually relieved to exit the aircraft as at that point I have a better chance of making it to the ground safely than the pilot.
I’ve been skydiving once, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat. I’m in Arizona now, so there’s probably a couple places to do it.
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One thing that bothers me, and what everyone should know, is proper placement for defibrillator pads if you’re using an AED.
It’s not 2 pads on the chest, it’s one pad on the upper chest (almost shoulder) on one side, and the other pad goes lower on their side. You’re trying to have the current go through their heart (not skip over the top of their skin).
The AEDs found in public locations are all very easy to use and all have pictures for the proper placement. Just open it up and it will tell you everything you need to do. Have someone nearby look for one at the same time you’re asking someone else to call emergency services.
They should all have razors if you need to get a little hair off (in case the person is especially hairy for one of the pad placements).
I work in IT so basically everything
So two people typing in one keyboard doesn’t make the hack faster?
I loved that entire scene for all the wrong reasons
I miss when Reddit ads were stupid things like a picture of a seagull or a fun game
The number of people who are “knitting” in a movie or on TV…maybe 40% of them are actually doing it, and that’s a high estimate (shout out to Miss Marple!). The rest appear to be wrapping yarn around one of the needles and then moving it vigorously, lol.
They also like to just smack the needles together! Smack smack smack!
People painting in movies, going over the same line like 7 times.
Click click clickety-click… I’m in! Click click click… okay, I’ve hacked the corporate security system and unlocked all the doors, click click… here’s the floor plan.
Can you disable the cameras?
Hang on… click click… okay you’re good.
To be fair there are a few Unify router setups in even big corporate settings that use the default passwords, and if you can get into the control panel, you pretty much could disable basically anything in a few keystrokes
I have changed annoying PA music in public venues from my phone, for example
But yeah, movies almost never get IT or secops correct
Of you don’t mind explaining, how? I can only code for maths purposes, but this sounds cool
So out of the box a lot of equipment has a set of standard default passwords, you can usually get them from the company’s own manuals or websites
A lot of people also never bother setting up their own passwords, so a lot of these devices are insecure.
If you are walking around a place, and see they offer free wifi, you can connect and the landing page usually gives you an idea of the manufacturer of their equipment. You look up the manuals and it will tell you the default IP address and login passwords for the management console. Try them. If they work, congrats you are a hacker and technically a criminal (so don’t do this at all ever even in minecraft)
If the site is REALLY STUPID none of these have changed, and from any web browser you can do anything you want to the network. You’ll need to learn how those kinds of devices work because the UIs aren’t designed for ease but you can still navigate them from a phone.
Unify is the most common midgrade equipment used by small to medium sites, and even as part of larger networks for campus style mesh networks but it’s unlikely a team with the skill to set that up would leave default passwords on
Is your job/hobby bank robbing?
LOL I’m thinking of shows where they infiltrate evil headquarters. The nerdy computer whiz Asian girl with the green side ponytail goes click-click-click, and then before you could find a song on your own computer she’s like oh look, here’s the incriminating evidence that proves they’ve been dumping toxic waste into the river for 30 years!
I don’t know about OP, but I remember reading and watching a lot of videos about blue hat hacker, whose sole job is to break things then report to secops so they fix it. They test everything including social hacks and physical ingress testing (getting in and out of a place they aren’t supposed to be in). One described their job as professional trespasser. The crazy shit they did was simple and could get them walking right into data centers without anyone noticing.
Movies always show engineers and tech programmers as being young asocial nerds. We’re not all young.
I’ve worked with programmers who actually look after their physical health too - it’s nuts!
We’re also not all asocial, I mean, I am, but I’ve met programmers who are extremely social.
About anything to do with computers. Anything.
Even worse the Hollywood Effect makes the stuff that I do that’s ACTUALLY impressive look like routine.
Fuckers will literally clap if I unjam their printer but manually recalculate a CRC header for a mission critical live database without a second of downtime and they’re like ‘Ok but isn’t that your job?’
BITCH LESS THAN 5 PEOPLE IN THE STATE CAN DO THIS
But you just typed in some numbers
BITCH I CANNOT EXPLAIN IN UNDER FOUR HOURS HOW TO FIGURE OUT THE RIGHT NUMBERS TO USE
TL:DR: Everything? Like, literally everything.
If it’s about driving? They’re looking everywhere except the road in front of them
Computers? It’s cringe, all I will say
Flying? Not even close
Brushing teeth? Put some tooth paste FFS!
Sex, perhaps? As bad as porn videos are at showing realistic sex situations, movies and especially TV shows are typically way worse with all the requirements to not accidentally show a nipple, omg!
Martial arts and fighting? The worst offenders. After twenty punches to the chest that will have broken half of the ribs, the protagonists now suddenly finds the strength in thinking about keeping his little girl safe and now he beats up 20 guys with those broken ribs
Being punched unconscious or getting some chloroform and they wake up the next day? Lolololollll. Humans are notoriously hard to keep them “out” without killing them, it’s why anesthetists are paid so well, it’s a very complicated job. When you’re out from an impact to the head, you need medical attention, you likely have a minor amount of brain damage. If you’re out for more than ten seconds, it’s brain damage for sure. If you’re out for over a minute, you’re likely not waking up with full abilities, you’re likely going to be a vegetable at best
Okay, doctors then? Saving a patient’s life with the buzzer? Yeah no. When the heart stops, that defibrillator won’t make it “go” again, the defib actually stops it in case of heart rithm problems. Also, CPR outside a hospital will result in death for about 90% of the cases, give or take, and Har % goes up by another 2 after 3 weeks later. The tiny % that does survive likely will have issues ranging from benign to being a benign vegetable.
+ All of physics. Especially anything involving characters falling, lasers, explosions, firearms, and any physics in space (sound, motion, temperature, black holes).
Not that it’s known physics, but time travel falls into this category too. Not the time travel itself, that’s just suspension of disbelief, but having time travel mechanics be internally consistent. It’s difficult to do well.
It took me getting obsessed with Kerbal Space Program to figure out my understanding of orbital physics was absolutely ridiculously bad
“What do you mean you have to go sideways to go up?!”
Have you watched The Expanse? I’ve seen some physicists talk it up for realism. At least as real as a show like that can be.
Yeah, I love that show. They do a really good job staying grounded in real physics when they’re not in the fiction side of sci-fi. IMO, their space mechanics are unmatched in sci-fi.
I love lots of franchises that also do it poorly, but I’m always pleased when they go the extra mile.
If they do the thing where they shrink, they never get the proportions right. Like in Honey, I Shrunk The Kids, the grass towers over their heads but they can ride snails.
I know a guy who spent 40+ years in special effects. He now goes around giving talks/demonstrations about it all. He has a series of photos showing how a typical car is rigged to explode into a fireball.
Depending on what the director is looking for, steel horns are welded to the car frame inside each door, the hood, trunk, windshield, etc. The horns will direct the fireball out the car when ignited. Each horn holds an explosive similar to gasoline connected to a detonator.
After that, each window is wired with a squib, a small explosive smaller than a coin that will shatter the window about 1/10th of a second before the fireballs are ignited.
If necessary the hood, trunk, and/or doors are also wired with smaller explosives to pop them open immediately before the fireball as well.
All those smaller explosives are needed to get the doors/windows out of the way for the main fireball explosives. The fireball doesn’t have enough punch to push the doors open on its own, and it also provides significantly more control of the whole explosion. (You’re not guessing where the windshield might get blown to, etc).
Hollywood is a facsimile of reality that now we are being punished for not conforming to, despite it being illusion
Modern western culture worships image over substance, and Hollywood is 100% image
The Rehearsal is the greatest analysis of the relationship of movie, TV and reality ever put to film. It’s like an adaptation of Baudrillard Simulacres et simulation. The simulacra turns into the reality that reality is forced to conform to. Pure philosophical musings on the wildest most ridiculous scene premises. It strips LA film culture naked and ridicules it without any sort of shame.
you have me intrigued
Brushing teeth? Put some tooth paste FFS!
They can’t really do that because the make-up would fall off. Also they never actually eat anything.
Being punched unconscious or getting some chloroform and they wake up the next day?
“They would either be really angry or I would kill them”
- Bill Bailey.
I think you really nailed it to the wall for all to see!
Hobby: Telescopes upside-down or back-to-front, pointed through windows, with aperture caps on, without eyepieces, under heavy light pollution and glare, magically show Hubble-level images of something only visible from the opposite hemisphere.
Job: The Government knows everything about you and any employee can pull up any info on anyone in seconds. Ffs we can’t even get two departments to cooperate on a common database format.
The Government knows everything about you and any employee can pull up any info on anyone in seconds.Have you been reading the news about Plantir lately? Won’t be fiction much longer.
Programming.
It’s long and actually even longer.
Gaming is apparently hitting all the buttons on the controller all the time
Hey, that’s how I play Super Smash Brothers!
Especially gaming in porn…
Pretty much everything. See “Bee Movie”.
Fiction: Daddy bee goes to work in the honey factory every day.
Fact: Daddy bee has glorious sex once and immediately dies. Bachelor bee is booted out of the hive by his sisters in the autumn and dies.
