Airport Scanner Technology Question

It's a fart detector.

Actually, it's essentially smelling you - like a bomb sniffing dog would - for certain chemicals.

Do all travelers have to be drived into the booth to inspect? or only spot test for some poeple, say, as you are chinese , a foreigner and then you are suspecting and selected for examination? Dont mind, just make a fun :)

They're suppose to do a random spot test. While I was there, every third person is told to go to the booth.

MidniteFighter

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Its very interesting. We know their american like to invent new things for their services, include security detection. they american dont keep new curious thigs to theirself. But as I know there is no any broken out new equipment using in the security inspection at airport in many developed countries. especially use for human body inspection. Most of these equipment use x-ray or tiny r-ray or neutrin ray for inspection of goods, luggages of travelers to find some dangerous objects. These equipment isnt allowed to use for body scanner frequencily, for they can harm body of human or animals. There is a new tech of so-called T-ray can penetrate clothes and find something under it. but its energy is too tiny to find more thick cloth, for eacmple, it can act a inspector in the season of spring and autumn, when people hasnt wared too much.But it still in lab. I guess the things you said is only traditional metal detecting booth or add some gas analysis facility, they can detect human's breath and some special odour in order to find some thing like drug etc. As its a small booth, so inspectors have to change fresh air into it to keep the space fresh and clean for next inspection. You happened to meet the machine send the fresh air at hte time. So you feel an airfow to blow you. Dont make a fuss about it.

One of the most unpleasant incidents I have suffered at an airport was when I was detained and a dog was brought to sniff around me, I hate dogs and found the whole experience disgusting.

The idea of having it done by a machine while unpleasant is nowhere near as bad as dogs

It is surely a small price to pay for a little security. I'd rather have a few people disgusted by a perfectly clean animal than have airplane explode. I'm sorry that you find the experience "unpleasant" but if you don't want to go through that then maybe you could pursuade the muslim fanatics that they shouldn't try to kill every non-muslim on the planet. That's all you have to do to get rid of airport security dogs...no big deal, right?

The device is used for explosives and narcotics detection, follow the link:

http://trace.smithsdetection.com/products/Default.asp?Product=24&section=Facilities

This may be an older version of the company's product but is the same kind of device.

Cheers

Nick

Well, guy, I think that is just a modern scanning machine that is used to detect a chemical / metal undernealth the visible part of you. So you don't need to panic over this, because we are in modern generation. Cheer!!!

MidniteFighter:

The intrument that you saw at the airpost was most likely a mass spectrometer. It is made by one of General Electric's subsidiaries. What it does is the blows "samples" off your person and analyzes the stream for "contaminants" (read: explosives and other contraband). The gush of air you "feel" is actually is the carrier gas that is used to blow off and transport the "contaminants" to the detector.

I, personally, do not think that it is any better than conventional GC mass spectrometers (where they swab you and analyze the swab for contraband) made by Thermo and others that are used at the airports. GE has ballyhooed this instrument so much that Uncle Sam was basically suckered into buying it at almost a million dollars a pop. In fact, it is far less accurate (prone to false positives) and far more expensive (almost 10 times) than the more-labor-intensive Thermo GC-MS. (By the way, our airport-detectors still cannot detect fragments of large molecules, i. e., biologoical weapons.) Our tax dollars at work! Hope this helps!

Best,

Nanoguru.

http://nanomat.blogspot.com

Thanks for letting me know what that was. It's nice to know where my tax dollar when.

MidniteFighter

Interestingly I saw a program on these units about a week ago. As others have said it is indeed looking for traces of certain compounds like explosives. The puffs that blow on you are air that are used to dislodge any residue and the inlet for the sensors is at the base of the unit. They won't tell you exactly what compounds the unit is capable of detecting or not as the case my be but they do claim that if you have handled explosive any time within the last few days it will set of an alarm.

I work in many nuclear plants and we always stop in one of those machines. It is an explosive detector. The machines always blow that puff of air across your body and annalise it for tele-tele chemicals.