Magnetic laundry aids and surface tension reduction
There are a number of magnetic devices on the market that purport to increase the efficiency of laundry detergents, or even reduce the need for them entirely by making water "wetter" (reduce its surface tension), thereby allowing the water to more easily penetrate into fabrics and wash the dirt away. Virtually all of these promoters repeat the false claim, found again and again on Web sites, that a magnetic field will reduce the surface tension of water. Any high school student who can borrow a glass capillary tube and a small permanent magnet from the school science lab can easily demonstrate that this is pure rubbish. Neither this, nor the complete lack of any mention of this effect in the very extensive body of scientific literature on the interfacial properties of water, seems to have had the slightest effect on inhibiting the spreading of this lie by hucksters of all kinds.
Although one purpose of detergents is to reduce the surface tension of water so as to encourage it to spread evenly over a surface instead of forming droplets, the primary role of a detergent is to "solubilize" small particles of grease-like "dirt". Detergent molecules tend to be long chains that possess water-soluble properties on one end, and water-insoluble (oil-like) properties on the other end. Operating on the principle that "like dissolves like", the water-insoluble ends tend to embed themselves in the dirt particles so that the water-solubile ends stick out, disguising the particle as water-solubile and enabling it to be washed away. I am not aware that any claims that magnetics can serve this function.
The best that can be said of magnetic laundry balls is that they help agitate the fabrics, but you can accomplish the same thing by dropping a rock into the washing machine. Otherwise, these devices are worthless.
This one not only uses magnets, but also "far-infrared" and "negative ions" — you get three kinds of bunk for the price of one!
One major vendor warns of the supposed dangers of conventional detergents (they are, after all, "petrochemicals"!) One of their pages provides links to a report from an outside testing lab that, if genuine, gives all appearances of itself having been "laundered" in that no comparisons of the effectiveness of their magnetic balls are made with non-magnetic balls (or even with rocks!), or with conventional detergents.
An example of the errant nonsense that is sometimes employed to fool consumers into buying these worthless products is quoted in the left column below from a now-disappeared Web page. Similar claims can be found on many current sales sites. The parts I consider wrong, misleading, or meaningless are highlighted.
The hype (with original grammar!)
The facts
The effects of magnetic fields on water was discovered in the early 1900's by Danish Physicist Hendrick Antoon Lorenz. He received the Nobel Prize in 1902 for his discovery of the effects of magnetic fields on water.
The 1902 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded jointly to Lorentz (who was Dutch) and Zeeman for the discovery of the effects of magnetic fields on atomic emission spectra. (If Lorentz studied water, it was probably its magnetic susceptibility, which has nothing to do with magnetic water treatment.)
Water is a polar molecule, something like a little magnet.
Water is indeed polar but this has nothing at all to do with magnetism. The polarity is due to the higher nuclear charge of oxygen, which displaces the shared bonding electrons towards the oxygen. This leaves the oxygen with a partial negative charge and the hydrogen with a partial positive charge. Water has no paramagnetic properties.
In normal water, the positively charged hydrogen atoms are attached to neighboring negatively charged oxygen. In fact, each oxygen is in close contact with 9 hydrogen's.
This statement confuses the bonding within H2O and the much weaker intramolecular hydrogen bonding that operates between molecules. Within H2O, each oxygen is permanently bonded to two hydrogen atoms. Connections between the hydrogen of one molecule and the oxygen of another are so weak that they are continually being broken by thermal motions and re-formed. Only in ice can one attribute a permanent structure to the water that extends beyond a single molecule.
This causes water to have a high surface tension so it sticks together.
Water does have a high surface tension, but this is not what causes water to "stick together"; both effects have their origin in the intermolecular hydrogen bonding (described above.) Surface tension is the work required to expand the area of the surface. The lower the surface tension, the more readily will a liquid penetrate narrow spaces as in a fabric.
Lorenz discovered that under the effects of a magnetic field, the polar molecules align and separate. Thus making the water softer.
The "softness" of water refers to the absence of dissolved salts, not to low surface tension. I am unaware of any evidence that the surface tension of water is affected by a magnetic field. Anyone with access to a capillary tube and a magnet can test this for themselves, since capillary rise is proportional to surface tension.
Fifty years after Lorenz's discovery, scientists expounded on similar ideas, learning to manipulate water's structure with chemical combinations, thus the invention of laundry soap.
Soaps and detergents operate in two ways, namely by reducing the surface tension but also by forming tiny globules around hydrophobic "dirt" particles and effectively rendering them soluble-- a process known as emulsification. Soaps have been known since ancient times.
Using magnetic technology, The ... Laundry Ball changes the molecular structure of water with ionization instead of harsh chemicals.
Ionization? Where does this come in? Magnetic fields do not induce ion formation and they do not change molecular structures.
THE ELECTRONS SPEND MORE TIME AROUND THE OXYGEN AND LESS TIME AROUND THE HYDROGEN MAKING IT POSITIVE. WITH THE MAGNETS, THE PLUS AND MINUS COMBINE CAUSING THE WATER MOLECULES TO STICK TOGETHER.
The first sentence is approximately true. The second is not. Moreover, don't we want the water molecules to NOT stick together?
The permanent magnets suspended in the ... Laundry Ball create a powerful magnetic field that aligns the water molecules, (hydrogen in one direction, oxygen in the other.)
Water molecules actually repel magnetic fields, and certainly cannot be aligned by them. Even if water were paramagnetic, thermal motions in the liquid would disrupt any alignment once the magnet moves away.
This alignment changes what is called the "surface tension" of the water, causing it to be extremely reduced. The "drops" of water become so small and minute, they can easily penetrate into the fabric.
The low surface tension that promotes penetration of water into the fabric is just the opposite of the conditions required to stabilize "small drops". Smaller drops inhibit wetting of a surface!
When this happens, the water is considered "activated". Along with this process, the minerals and salts suspended in the water become activated into an "ionic" form, (charged particles), aiding in the cleaning process.
This kind of "activation" is not yet known to Chemistry! Further, the minerals are not "suspended", but are dissolved and already exist as ions. And the major ions of Ca and Mg tend to reduce the effectiveness of detergents.
During the 1970's the observation of effects of magnetic fields on water began in the U.S. In 1984 , the institute of Electronic Engineers(IEE) recognized the new developments. Early in 1984, Dr. Klaus J Kronenberg spoke at a conference on magnetism in St. Paul, Minnesota.
It's a bit much to state that his work was "recognized"; IEEE simply published the conference proceedings. Kronenberg's presentation can be found in IEEE Transactions on Magnetics, Vol MAG-21 (5) Sept 1985. The paper offers no evidence for magnetic water softening.
The physical process used to cause this change in crystalline structure is provided by the use of magnetic induction fields, which when exposed to moving water, interacts with the water's electric dipole moment and applies a torque to the water molecule. The subsequent down stream effect of these coherently-oriented water molecules provides the electric potential which supplies the energy necessary to form the more complex crystalline form of calcium carbonate, called aragonite
The "torque" a magnet could apply to a water molecule would be far too minute to compete with ordinary thermal motions, which would in any case disrupt any temporary orientation even if it were to occur. There is no known way of utilizing electric potentials to cause the carbonate to precipitate as aragonite.
There is another "Laundry Disk" product that employs "special patented sophisticated ceramics" instead of magnets. According to the manufacturer, these magical ceramic particles
cause the water molecule to dissociate through an electrical phenomenon (destabilization). The thus "fractured" H2O molecule units are much smaller, enabling them to easier penetrate fabrics and dissolve dirt, resulting in the readily observable cleaning effect. When the ceramics are removed from the water, it returns to its normal electrically neutral state.
This promoters of this crackpot scheme appear to be somewhat confused about the meaning of "dissociation" in this context. Independent test results by U. Minnesota Water Resources Center and Consumer Reports (Feb 1995) do not support the performance claims of he manufacturer.
Yet another Laundry Disk product that does not use magnets makes the absurd claim that
Each disc contains electrically charged ceramic beads that creat hydronium (H+) and hydroxide ions (OH-) in the wash water. The discs soften water for better cleaning,
Any student who as passed first-year Chemistry knows that these two ions, even if they could be magically created (they cannot), would instantly recombine into H2O.
Sniggle.net's Laundry Ball Solution page is an interesting and amusing summary of laundry ball scams.
The states of {Utah} and {Oregon} initiated consumer fraud proceedings against Tradenet Marketing, a Florida company that promoted a laundry ball device called "The Laundry Solution".
There are a number of magnetic devices on the market that purport to increase the efficiency of laundry detergents, or even reduce the need for them entirely by making water "wetter" (reduce its surface tension), thereby allowing the water to more easily penetrate into fabrics and wash the dirt away. Virtually all of these promoters repeat the false claim, found again and again on Web sites, that a magnetic field will reduce the surface tension of water. Any high school student who can borrow a glass capillary tube and a small permanent magnet from the school science lab can easily demonstrate that this is pure rubbish. Neither this, nor the complete lack of any mention of this effect in the very extensive body of scientific literature on the interfacial properties of water, seems to have had the slightest effect on inhibiting the spreading of this lie by hucksters of all kinds.
The best that can be said of magnetic laundry balls is that they help agitate the fabrics, but you can accomplish the same thing by dropping a rock into the washing machine. Otherwise, these devices are worthless. 