when he was shot, Alexander Graham Bell showed up with a metal detector to try to locate the bullet

vaviper.blogspot.com ^ | 11/18/2017 | VA Viper

[fella]

It was “ Destiny of the Republic”.

Thank you.

[hanamizu]

Watched a program on this. It claimed that Garfield’s physician would only let Bell scan where he, the doctor, thought the bullet might be, he did not allow bell to scan Garfield’s whole torso. It seemed that Garfield placed his complete trust in this particular doctor and basically told everyone the doctor’s advise and treatment were to be followed. And this doctor made some serious mistakes.

As to all of the probing. For a long time doctors had realized that if the bullet didn’t kill you, your clothing the bullet took with it in its journey into your could cause a deadly infection. The probing was to look both for the bullet and clothing scraps.

[morphing libertarian]

I believe the geiger counter kept hitting on the metal bed springs. If the assassin was being tried today he would be found guilty of a lesser offense by claiming the doctors and Bell killed the president. .

[AnonymousConservative]

Not necessarily.

I do not know if the effect would be sufficient, but if a compass’ magnetic needle gave off a sufficient magnetic field, and you moved it over a piece of conductive metal, the moving magnetic field would, through inductance, create a current “swirl” of moving electrons in the metal, regardless of magnetism. That swirl of current will produce a magnetic field of its own, exactly opposite to that of the inducing magnetic field, and that field will interact with the field of the needle, as if you were moving a magnet by it.

Any conductive metal, put in a moving magnetic field will do that.

A metal detector is actually producing a shifting magnetic field, to simulate a moving magnet, and measuring the counter-field produced by the inductance current in the metal you are detecting. That is why it can detect other, non-magnetic metals.

Never tried it with a compass though, but I suppose if the compass has a magnetic effect strong enough to detect iron, moving it would detect other metals.