How do you test whether water has been magnetized?

[Leylan24]

How do you test whether water has been magnetized or the number of minerals soluble in the water!!! PLZ HELP URGENT

[deleted-71712]

Hi Leylan24,

Welcome to the forum. I'm going to guess from your question that you're interested in magnetic water treatment. I hadn't heard of this before, but it popped up when I plugged some of the key words in your question into a search engine and seems to fit with what you're asking about.

First, a quick note: Saying that a material "has been magnetized" generally means that it has been exposed to a magnetic field and, as a result, has become a permanent magnet. This is not something that can happen to water. Water is diamagnetic, which means that when it is exposed to a magnetic field, its molecules align in a way that creates a small repulsive force between the water and the magnet -- but when the magnet is removed, the water molecules go back to moving around randomly. There is no permanent effect on the water.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamagnetism

So, I would advise you to refer to the water in your experiment as "magnetically treated" rather than "magnetized".

Second, this is definitely a controversial topic. A lot of people think that magnetic water treatment is pseudoscience, because the explanations that advocates (i.e. people trying to sell you things!) give for how it might work don't make sense from a scientific point of view. From what I've read, it might be the case that magnetic treatment has some effect on ions in solution, depending on a lot of variables -- but it is not understood how this works. So, you'll want to be careful about the sources you use to read up on this. Feel free to post some here if you aren't sure. Here is a page written by someone who is pretty skeptical:

http://www.chem1.com/CQ/magscams.html

Another that is denser with scientific terminology:

http://www1.lsbu.ac.uk/water/descal.html
http://www1.lsbu.ac.uk/water/magnetic.html

Here's one with instructions for building a water treatment unit, as well as lots of links to more info:

http://www.matchrockets.com/water/magwatertreat.html

What minerals are you interested in? A given compound will have a solubility in water that is reported as (mass of compound)/(volume of water), often g/100 mL. This depends on temperature -- think of dissolving sugar in iced tea vs. hot tea. Temperature and pressure history, rather than just conditions at the moment, can play a role (see supersaturation). Also, water pretty much always has something dissolved in it, and that can effect the solubility of other things, so you'll want to make sure that all your water comes from the same source. I'd recommend buying jugs of purified water rather than using tap water, because its solutes can vary from day to day, especially if you have a well. It takes time for many things to dissolve, especially near the solubility limit, and stirring can speed up this process -- but you'll want to wait a while after to see if suspended particles precipitate from solution.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supersaturation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precipitat ... emistry%29

With the above in mind, you could do something like this to test solubility:
-- Fill two identical containers (A and B) with equal amounts of water from the same source.
-- Add equal masses of the mineral of interest, about twice the amount you expect to be able to dissolve, to each container.
-- Wait a while (probably days) for the mineral to dissolve as much as possible. If you stir or heat the solutions to accelerate this process, make sure that A and B are treated identically.
-- Treat the water in container A magnetically. Try to do the same thing to container B, except for the magnetic field. That is, if you are stirring container A with a magnet, also stir container B with something that is similar but not magnetic. If the water in A must pass through a device, do the same thing with B with the magnetic field turned off.
-- If the solutions have been agitated, wait for them to settle, then measure the amount of mineral that has not dissolved (should be floating around the bottom of the container). Unless there is a big difference, you probably won't be able to see it. I suggest pouring off as much water as possible, then drying out the mineral remaining in the bottom of each container and measuring its mass -- but be very careful that you don't accidentally pour out any small chunks. You could try pouring through a very fine mesh to help catch any pieces of mineral that escape.

Note that you should do multiple trials with and without magnetic treatment and then average the results to get better statistics -- that is, an idea of whether the difference between A and B is larger than the error in each mass. I've also attempted to give you an idea of what variables should be controlled (water source, stirring, temperature), but there are probably others that you'll come across in your reading. See the Project Guide for more info:

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... l?From=Tab

Hope that helps,
Amanda