AC magnetic field strengths

Tapley, Mark mtapley at swri.edu
Wed Mar 15 13:51:07 CDT 2017


On Mar 15, 2017, at 12:01 PM, Al Kossow via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:

> I bought an AlphaLabs GM-2 Gaussmeter for another project, and measured the AC magnetic
> field strength touching these devices yesterday, since I really didn't have any idea beyond
> order of magnitude what they might be
> 
> Handheld tape head demagnetizer: 40 Gauss
> GC Elec 9317 CRT degausing coil: 70 Gauss
> Audiolab TD-3 desktop bulk eraser: 1000 Gauss
> Inmac 7180 or
> RS 44-233A handheld bulk tape erasers: 2000 Gauss
> 
> 
> 
> also the DC field of a 1/4" button super magnet like on the
> backs of clip on badges is about 3000 Gauss

More context available at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(magnetic_field)

ranging from 50 femtoGauss (what the Gravity Probe B SQUID magnetometers measured with several days’ averaging) to 100 MegaGauss (strongest pulsed field ever obtained at Sandia Labs).

Interestingly that page claims 12.5 kGauss for a "neodymium–iron–boron (Nd2 Fe14 B) rare earth magnet” (subscripts on the atomic symbols got converted to plain text during cut-n-paste). Guess the badges have weaker versions?

Interesting to compare earth field and the badge fastener field to practical exposure limit for pacemakers - only about a factor of 10 at the poles - and to loudspeaker coils, which are 5000 times above the recommended pacemaker limit. 

Now I know why people with pacemakers don’t like rock music (and name tags)!

:-)

									- Mark



More information about the cctech mailing list