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  4. If I wear ANY battery watch, within a week the battery is dead. Why?
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If I wear ANY battery watch, within a week the battery is dead. Why?

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Offline Bored chemist

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Re: If I wear ANY battery watch, within a week the battery is dead. Why?
« Reply #20 on: 15/03/2020 09:45:07 »
Quote from: Colin2B on 15/03/2020 09:29:48
Quote from: jfoldbar on 15/03/2020 07:51:42
i can not go in an MRI machine. who knows why,
What symptoms do you get? Why are the MRI team not investigating?
If this is true it needs thorough investigation and would be a major piece of research, I’m amazed no one has written it up.
I wondered about that , I'm guessing it's claustrophobia or maybe shrapnel or the like , but if I'm wrong then it's potentially very interesting
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Offline alancalverd

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Re: If I wear ANY battery watch, within a week the battery is dead. Why?
« Reply #21 on: 15/03/2020 11:49:13 »
Quote from: jfoldbar on 15/03/2020 07:51:42
i can not go in an MRI machine. who knows why
You do. Radiographers have a standard questionnaire for prospective MRI patients, asking about implants, tattoos, aneurysm clips etc. They are not psychic - exclusion depends on your answers, and a "don't know" or "possibly" should be followed up with an x-ray if there's a suggestion of unacceptable risk.
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Offline pensador

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Re: If I wear ANY battery watch, within a week the battery is dead. Why?
« Reply #22 on: 15/03/2020 12:11:46 »
There is a remote possibility that a watch battery could discharge due to electromagnetic waves, interfering with the watch electronics causing it to draw more current than normal.

Is the OP a radio amateur or live directly in front of a radio mast, maybe he has a high body temperature due to microwaving himself?

Ref the MRI scanner, maybe he is not human, and emits microwaves :)
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Offline Bored chemist

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Re: If I wear ANY battery watch, within a week the battery is dead. Why?
« Reply #23 on: 15/03/2020 13:52:09 »
Quote from: pensador on 15/03/2020 12:11:46
Ref the MRI scanner, maybe he is not human, and emits microwaves
Humans emit microwaves.
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Offline jfoldbar

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Re: If I wear ANY battery watch, within a week the battery is dead. Why?
« Reply #24 on: 15/03/2020 18:16:54 »
electricity is made by spinning magnets around. this is how a generator works. when the magnets of an MRI spin around, it makes electricity in me. it feels the same as if i grab an electric fence.
it is not claustrophobic or shrapnel .

why would anyone investigate if it only affects 1 person. surely they have better things to do?
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Offline Bored chemist

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Re: If I wear ANY battery watch, within a week the battery is dead. Why?
« Reply #25 on: 15/03/2020 18:21:43 »
Quote from: jfoldbar on 15/03/2020 18:16:54
why would anyone investigate
Because it's really interesting.
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Offline jfoldbar

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Re: If I wear ANY battery watch, within a week the battery is dead. Why?
« Reply #26 on: 15/03/2020 20:20:21 »
Quote from: Bored chemist on 15/03/2020 18:21:43
Because it's really interesting.
i guess so. it is quite rare. . as u probably guess, ive only had the 1 MRI. i was about 35 y.o. when i done it. the doc thought i had epilepsy but i told him no and described what i was feeling. even after turning off the machine and getting out, it was about 2-3 hours for the symptoms to stop enough for me to drive home. they didnt seem the slightest bit curious about the "why". i was just simply another patient.(that couldnt leave for 3 hours)
ive never even researched the "why" myself. i just dont have MRI again.
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Offline alancalverd

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Re: If I wear ANY battery watch, within a week the battery is dead. Why?
« Reply #27 on: 15/03/2020 20:47:56 »
MRI magnets don't spin, but they do induce currents in conductors. Occasionally we get a fault in the insulation of the receiver coils, which can produce a localised shock or burn, but I've never heard of persistent symptoms.

Happy to investigate further - PM me with the details, please! You may not be the only such case, just the first one to report it as a serious adverse event. I am a consultant in medical physics, always interested in patient safety, and I really have nothing better to do - there is nothing better!
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Offline Bored chemist

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Re: If I wear ANY battery watch, within a week the battery is dead. Why?
« Reply #28 on: 15/03/2020 21:01:52 »
Quote from: jfoldbar on 15/03/2020 20:20:21
it was about 2-3 hours for the symptoms to stop enough for me to drive home.
That's tricky to explain in terms of an induced current.
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Offline evan_au

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Re: If I wear ANY battery watch, within a week the battery is dead. Why?
« Reply #29 on: 16/03/2020 09:27:03 »
Quote from: jfoldbar
when the magnets of an MRI spin around
Could you be describing a CAT scanner?
- They look sort of similar: you lie in a tube and have 3D images taken

In a CAT scanner, the X-Ray source and detector really does spin around your body.

I've never had either if them, but I understand that the MRI scanner is very noisy, as there are currents flowing through wires in a very strong magnetic field.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CT_scan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_resonance_imaging
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Re: If I wear ANY battery watch, within a week the battery is dead. Why?
« Reply #30 on: 16/03/2020 12:03:17 »
Good point! The CAT scan can produce a very eerie effect.

If you undress quickly or shuffle about in a surgical gown on a nonconductive mattress, you can generate a static charge of a millicoulomb or so, which will raise your surface potential up to a few kilovolts. The rotating fan-shaped x-ray beam ionises the air around the part that is being scanned, which discharges to the grounded parts of the machine. The resulting current flow from the rest of your body towards the scanned area will indeed feel like an electric fence.

You can get a similar but less alarming sensation from a plain x-ray, which discharges a larger area. The usual report is a creeping sensation as the hair on your arms or legs relaxes.

Worst case I've had to deal with was a very posh private mammography unit for seated or wheelchair patients. The radiographers shuffled across the carpet on their knees to position the patient. Wise superintendent specified a wool carpet with antistatic treatment but the hospital accountants obviously knew better and bought nylon. The first patient nearly hit the roof as sparks flew from her nipple.
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Re: If I wear ANY battery watch, within a week the battery is dead. Why?
« Reply #31 on: 17/03/2020 08:08:04 »
Electrolysis ?

Is it beyond the realms of possibility that the gold and the OPs body are acting like an anode and a cathode in gold electroplating https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_plating? If this is a possibility the batteries on his watches might also be eroding internally in a similar way to his gold jewelery.

Would there be any mileage in dismantling one of the batteries and seeing what it is like inside?
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Offline jfoldbar

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Re: If I wear ANY battery watch, within a week the battery is dead. Why?
« Reply #32 on: 17/03/2020 10:26:33 »
hhhmmm. i always thought MRI  had spinning magnets. before i done the MRI, the little research i done on them suggested this, and whenever i talked to any doctor about this they confirmed it. perhaps it it more complex than that it that is a way to satisfy the layman.

it definitely wasnt a CAT scan. ive had that many times without a problem. not sure what is meant by eerrie, i have never experienced any mental uncomfortable feelings in either machine.
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Offline alancalverd

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Re: If I wear ANY battery watch, within a week the battery is dead. Why?
« Reply #33 on: 17/03/2020 11:20:17 »
Aha! The "spinning magnets" are the hydrogen nuclei in your body, and they spin all the time anyway! The primary MRI magnet and radiofrequency field simply aligns a few of the spins, then we "listen" with a radio receiver as they relax back to their random orientations. We apply three time-and space-varying magnetic fields to select which part of the body we are aligning and listening to. The strength of the emitted signal as the spins relax is determined by the density of protons and the rate of relaxation is related to their chemical environment.
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Re: If I wear ANY battery watch, within a week the battery is dead. Why?
« Reply #34 on: 19/03/2020 18:47:49 »
My last guess !

All the symptons are linked ? Assuming the OP is human :)

There is a slim possibility that galvanic corrosion is taking place between the gold jewelry and the watch batteries, via your skin/sweat/blood.

Have you examined the dead batteries? do they have a gold deposit on or in them. 

Galvanic corrosion is common boats either on the land or in the water, https://www.boatus.com/seaworthy/magazine/2015/july/marine-corrosion-101.asp
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Re: If I wear ANY battery watch, within a week the battery is dead. Why?
« Reply #35 on: 06/04/2020 14:52:52 »
Quote from: wolfekeeper on 22/09/2018 01:15:36
Good-quality watches with good quality batteries fitted by jewellers don't do that.

I once had a jeweller put a new battery in my watch (trouble-free for 20 years) and a week later it stopped. I took it back, and then a week or two later it stopped again. I forget how many times this happened before I made a key to take the back off myself. The problem was apparent immediately: someone couldn't be bothered unscrewing the battery clip, so they just bent it out of the way to remove the battery. Each new battery was just popping out from under the bent clip.

Another tradesman in the "If you want something done properly, do it yourself" pigeonhole with all the rest.
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