What do movies always get wrong about your job/hobby?
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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 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.
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About anything to do with computers. Anything.
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I don't think I've ever seen my job in a movie. The only place I could imagine industrial embroidery ever showing up on screen would be as the setting for a chase scene or something.
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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.
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It wouldn't be nearly as fast, but why would you not just stop the condenser pump so the helium stops cycling through, causing the freezing, instead of venting it off? Sure, venting it off would be faster, but in the lack of an actual emergency, you'd think you could wait like 5 minutes.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]If it's not an emergency, then you let the vendor follow the procedure they have in place for shutting down the magnet.
Edit:
For example: We had a flood in an MRI room. The vendor was called out to ramp the magnet down so that they could deal with the flood.
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Call centers: that there is time between calls. That people have time off the phone to form friendships with coworkers.
Handyman: we have sex with clients.
IT: that we can just code anything we want regardless of standards, policies and best practices.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Isn't that second one just porn?
Edit: actually, nevermind. I've seen this in weekly detective shows, but now they make the handymen gay so it's different somehow.
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Isn't that second one just porn?
Edit: actually, nevermind. I've seen this in weekly detective shows, but now they make the handymen gay so it's different somehow.
But porn is a popular media format fitting the structure of a movie.
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I don't think I've ever seen my job in a movie. The only place I could imagine industrial embroidery ever showing up on screen would be as the setting for a chase scene or something.
I wanna see the flight scene in one of those shops now where someone gets embroidered during the fight.
I also work with industrial embroidery machines (not directly, we just have them at work) so I know the like 10 seconds under a needle wouldn't be enough time to do anything really, but I'm imagining a room full of machines making military name strips, hero blocks a goons punch and shoves his hand under a needle while the goon yells in agony. Camera focuses on how horrified face as he lifts his hand to reveal "Maj. Payne" embroidered across his hand. The goon then faints.
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Gaming.
There is no way that this obvious secret wasn’t discovered until now. If there are as many gamers as you show, it would’ve been found within 2 weeks maximum. Looking at you, ready player one. Cringy McCringeCringe can’t be the only one who found these obvious secrets after literal years.
"Drive backwards on the track"
That's literally the first thing people do in racing videogames. That would have been SECONDS
Yes it was way better than watching him play Atari Joust for 30 minutes but still!
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I have not unlocked a single chasity belt, it doesnt even come up as a service they might need.
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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.
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I miss when Reddit ads were stupid things like a picture of a seagull or a fun game
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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
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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
The more complex the task, the less fucking impressed the proles are.
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The more complex the task, the less fucking impressed the proles are.
It angers me even more than normal that this is so fucking true
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It angers me even more than normal that this is so fucking true
currently rescuing 7tb off a corrupted stripe. My boss does not seem to grasp what Big Deal this is. Ima bout to dig up recovery pricing to slap him with
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currently rescuing 7tb off a corrupted stripe. My boss does not seem to grasp what Big Deal this is. Ima bout to dig up recovery pricing to slap him with
That's a smart way to do it, can't argue with an accepted price
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That's a smart way to do it, can't argue with an accepted price
actually his response was "eh, if we didn't have you we'd just tell the customers we lost the data"
I want to skin him and wear him as a hat.
