Hey, all you smart people out there! I know that metal pins and joints will set off a metal detector, but they won't attract a magnet. But, here's the twist: Does anyone out there know if someone with a nearly entirely steel skeleton be attracted by a magnet?(or whatever medical bone-pin thingys are made of, that would be helpful too)
Heh... a good part of my ending kind of relies on this, and I want to be accurate, so please help me on this one!

Thanks in advance...
La Pianista Irlandesa

Well, it depends on the metal. Surgical stainless steel is only weakly ferromagnetic, and the higher-end plates and pins used these days are titanium. You'd want to stay out of an extraordinarily powerful magnetic field, like an MRI, but ordinary magnets wouldn't be an issue.

I can't really help with the medical side of this except to say that my father's replacement knee was made of titanium.

As far as stainless steel goes, then generally is pretty much non-magnetic. Steel is iron with other things added to give the strength and durability, usually carbon.

To make this steel 'stainless' they add chromium - at least 11.5% and often twice that amount, or more. This makes it stainless because the iron rusts and wears off leaving the chrome. Obviously the chrome just by itself reduces the magnetivity of the steel, but in this form it is still magneticly attractable.

Your problem comes when they added nickel to it as it alters the structure and makes it non-magnetic unless it has been work-hardened i.e. hit with a hammer. Adding nickel makes it easier to work with, and less brittle, and less likely to corrode, so I would imagine - but I don't know - that for medical uses this is what they would use.

Unfortunately for your story, the most likely materials used to construct a replacement skeleton would be titanium and carbon fibre and probably other more modern, more interesting materials, but none of them would be magnetic. Mind you, if you want to get him stuck to a magnet, then you could always put him between the magnet and a filing cabinet.

So, if I interpret your answer correctly, if my person had a titanium-skeleton, and was near a magnet with the strength of an MRI magnet, the person would stick to it?
Just clarifying...
lPI

Do you need to attract him to something? Or would a sticky end of any sort be OK? I've got a particularly evil way to kill him if you want :-)

No no... I just want to trap HER... She's a cyborg (her skeleton was completely rebuilt with said tituanium), and this other dude wants to say that he built her, and he needs a way to capture her that wouldn't trap anyone else. And no, I don't want to kill her off.

But, if I could use it in some other thing, I'd still like to know the evil way to nip someone off that you were thinking of... -strokes chin thoughtfully- ;-)
lPI

Okay, then. I can't think of a way to trap HER, unless she were in a specially prepared room, but you might be able to control her while leaving everybody else unaffected - or kill her in a rather nasty way - if 'this other dude' were to build a giant induction coil.

Do a search for 'titanium induction' (no quotes) and you'll find a lot of sites selling titanium cookware for use on induction cookers.

I would imagine that being cooked from the inside while still alive is not a particularly pleasant way to go!

On the other hand, he could just warm her up a bit until she gave in. Regulo three for 20 minutes ought to do it.

Good Lord in Heaven above! -gets up off floor from fainting- And I thought that the Aztecs were brutal! I sure wouldn't want to roast from the inside out! But I'll keep that in mind if someone is particularly irritating and/or I'm feeling particularly evil someday... thanks for that.

But yeah, the other dude (whose name is, if you can believe it, Sedgwick Finkleberry) is probably going to set up some giant magnet or something along those lines. Then I'll go from there...

Now, if only I could figure out the middle-end bridge that easily....

Even if she didn't cook through inductive heating, I imagine an MRI-strength field would screw up any electronic components.

Just to clarify, titanium is non-magnetic. Well, paramagnetic, strictly speaking; the point is, it wouldn't be drawn to a magnet under normal circumstances. As has been mentioned, movement (and certainly thermal effects) could be caused by induction.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramagnetic

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SF08 - Mary Celeste, horror
Non Levitas Tolero Fatui

So, if I understand this correctly, titanium would only be drawn to, say, an MRI magnet or a junkyard magnet? I'm just making sure I've got this right, as you seem to know what you're talking about.
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la Pianista Irlandesa ♪
"When in doubt, look intelligent." -Garrison Keillor