Quench!!!

I was persuaded by Tobias Gilk to post a video of the quench of Berkeley's old 4 T magnet, a fairly momentous event that a lot of people have enjoyed watching in private (whether they were absent or witnessed it live). The quench happened back in 2009. We didn't publicize the video at the time because we didn't want a bunch of know-nothings accusing us of wasting resources. (See the FAQ in the video comments if you want to know what happened to the magnet - we turned it into a mock scanner - and why we didn't try to recover the helium.) But there comes a time when the value to others becomes greater than the annoyance of poorly informed trolls venting their spleens on YouTube. So here it is, finally:

In case you missed seeing some of our antics in the couple of days leading up to the quench, here's that video, too:

And finally, while uploading the most recent video I tripped over another quench video from what looks and sounds like some Scandinavians: (I'm not even going to guess between Finland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland,...)

Looks like these guys had as much fun as we did! What's really clear in their tests is the oscillation of magnetic objects between the regions of peak gradient at either end of the magnet - a couple of feet out from the faces of the magnet at either end, the magnetic field and cryostat being symmetrical. The speed of movement is sufficiently slow at 1.5 T to see things clearly, versus the crazy violent movement of objects in the 4 T field. They have better music, too.