The pictures and stories are the stuff of slapstick: wheelchairs, gurneys and even floor polishers jammed deep inside M.R.I. scanners whose powerful magnets grabbed them from the hands of careless hospital workers.

The police officer whose pistol flew out of his holster and shot a wall as it hit the magnet. The sprinkler repairman whose acetylene tank was yanked inside, breaking its valve and starting a fire that razed the building.

Good stuff.

The pictures and stories are the stuff of slapstick: wheelchairs, gurneys and even floor polishers jammed deep inside M.R.I. scanners whose powerful magnets grabbed them from the hands of careless hospital workers.

The police officer whose pistol flew out of his holster and shot a wall as it hit the magnet. The sprinkler repairman whose acetylene tank was yanked inside, breaking its valve and starting a fire that razed the building.

This is pretty amusing. I knew the magnets in MRI machines were strong, but I did not realize they were strong enough to make objects go flying across the room. This article even mentions an incident when a fireman was pulled into the machine and almost folded in half due to his oxygen tank. That's a powerful magnet!

Cited in this article, the Simply Physics page is an good resource for information about MRI. Don't miss the page with pictures of objects being sucked into the machines.

This reminds me of playing with a degaussing coil when I was a kid. They are basically strong electrically powered magnets. My father had one from when he used to repair old television sets. I used to set it on the table, turn it on, and make structures in the middle of its field using nails, paper clips, or any other small objects made of ferromagnetic material I could find around the house. It seemed like magic.