Electroagnetic Induction

Walk-through metal detectors. Walk-through or portal detectors are common in airports, public buildings, and military installations. Their portals are bracketed with two large coils or loop-type antennae, one a source and the other a detector. Electromagnetic waves (in this case, low-frequency radio waves) are emitted by the source coil into the detection space. When the electromagnetic field of the transmitted wave impinges on a conducting object, it induces transient currents on the surface of the object; these currents, in turn, radiate electromagnetic waves. These secondary waves are sensed by the detector coil.

Hand held metal detectors. Metal detectors small enough to be hand-held are often used at security checkpoints to localize metal objects whose presence has been detected by a walk-through system. Some units are designed to be carried by a pedestrian scanning for metal objects in the ground (e.g., nails, loose change, landmines). All such devices operate on variations of the same physical principle as the walk-through metal detector, that is, they emit time-varying electromagnetic fields and listen for waves coming back from conducting objects. Some ground-search models further analyze the returned fields to distinguish various common metals from each other.