I don't think you fail your geek roll-- you're the first to mention magnetism :)
It's the Biot-Savart law... which might not be wholly appropriate, actually, depending on what exactly in the Crystal Skulls cause the magnetic field. At any rate, it's used to find the force exerted on a charged particle by a magnetic field.
Anyway, the important bit is the "over r squared" part. When Indy is in the warehouse at the beginning (we're talking first ten minutes of the movie, so I'm not really spoiling much if you haven't seen it), and he locates the magnetically charged item he's looking for by tossing gunpowder into the air from across the warehouse, and then everyone gathers close to it and somehow doesn't manage to have all of the metal on their persons ripped summarily off their persons... well, that's the part of the movie where I turned to my friend and hissed "OVER R SQUARED
( ... )
Yeah... I do believe they made the point near the middle of the movie that it wasn't magnetism (due to the gold thing)... and then just kind of left it hanging there.
Okay, the choices are: 1) Gravity 2) Electromagnetism 3) Strong force 4) Weak force
1: subject to inverse square rule 2: subject to inverse square rule 3 and 4: not in effect at any distance observed in the movie
Gold is not ferromagnetic, by the way, but that's not the only magnetic state. I don't know enough about magnetism to say whether "it attracts gold" disqualifies the force as magnetic. They continued referring to it as magnetism, at any rate.
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It's the Biot-Savart law... which might not be wholly appropriate, actually, depending on what exactly in the Crystal Skulls cause the magnetic field. At any rate, it's used to find the force exerted on a charged particle by a magnetic field.
Anyway, the important bit is the "over r squared" part. When Indy is in the warehouse at the beginning (we're talking first ten minutes of the movie, so I'm not really spoiling much if you haven't seen it), and he locates the magnetically charged item he's looking for by tossing gunpowder into the air from across the warehouse, and then everyone gathers close to it and somehow doesn't manage to have all of the metal on their persons ripped summarily off their persons... well, that's the part of the movie where I turned to my friend and hissed "OVER R SQUARED ( ... )
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1) Gravity
2) Electromagnetism
3) Strong force
4) Weak force
1: subject to inverse square rule
2: subject to inverse square rule
3 and 4: not in effect at any distance observed in the movie
Gold is not ferromagnetic, by the way, but that's not the only magnetic state. I don't know enough about magnetism to say whether "it attracts gold" disqualifies the force as magnetic. They continued referring to it as magnetism, at any rate.
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You're dealing with 1950's sci-fi (or sci-fantasy, more likely) pulp. With aliens.
Normal science doesn't come in to play anywhere near as much as one would like.
Besides, hypnotism used to be called magnetism, too.
It's one of those catch-all, kinda techy words that get thrown around a lot... and rarely in the correct way. :)
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*stabs the 1950's, too, just for good measure*
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It's all about The Science!
I really grew up on too many bad 50s sci-fi films to even blink much at stuff like this.
You would twitch uncontrollably at the movie quoted above. :)
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I really didn't like it the first time I saw it, but now my brain can accept it as a genre quirk.
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