shaping water with the power of my own thoughts

[rone]

I recently, despite the clear and evident bogon flux, purchased a bottle of Penta.  (Seriously, one of the first things you'll find on that site is, "Bill Holloway and his son Michael have always been obsessed with water purity."  Sounds like something General Jack D. Ripper would say.  Lucky for Michael that dad Bill didn't deny Mrs. Holloway his essence.)  After consuming it and detecting nothing special in its taste, nor later any feeling that would indicate superior hydration, i looked online to find proof of its serpentoleaginous nature.  I quickly found it mentioned on "Water cluster quackery", which linked me to a page on James Randi's site.  So i then decided to follow the Randi-Holloway saga.

The thing that depresses me is that this particular brand of quackery has been out for over 3½ years.  It faded a bit but has come back strong, somehow becoming an Olympic sponsor last year.  The price for Penta is brutally high, even for bottled water.  How long has it taken other snake-oil phenomena to die?

I figured i could run my own test regarding the most easily proven claim: that their water boils at a higher temperature than regular water.  Unfortunately, i don't have thermometers that are that precise.  I will have to resign myself to no longer patronizing their lies.

ADDENDUM: Thanks to the Wikipedia entry, i noticed that Randi's latest newsletter says that the British Penta team might pick up the JREF challenge that was dropped almost four years ago.

Comments

[pdcawley.livejournal.com]

I particularly like the way the UK Penta team threatened a Guardian (http://search.guardian.co.uk/search97cgi/s97networkr_cgi?QueryText=penta+water&Action=Search&Collection=archive_artifact&ResultTemplate=Archive_Artifact.hts&SortSpec=VdkPublicationDate+Desc) journalist.

[eejitalmuppet.livejournal.com]

From first principles, the higher boiling point claim should be treated with suspicion (quite apart from the suspect experimental method of their own studies). Generally, non-volatile impurities lower melting points but elevate boiling points.

[nothings.livejournal.com]

Man, so that Feynman quote you posted earlier was you quoting Randi quoting a reader quoting Alan Alda quoting Feynman?

[vatine]

I shall have to give the Penta water people a read and see if they're even halfway as... out there as the Swedish PLus&Minus-balanced whirled water (stops electrical over-sensitivity, mobile phone radiation, especially from the battery (it radiates when the mobile is off don't you know?) and makes plants grow faster).

Unfortunately, it seems they mostly have their web-site in Swedish (the only thing translated I could see is the order page), so I will actually not include a link.

[frosch.livejournal.com]

The part I like best here is all the basic scientific research supposedly ongoing to discover the properties of an engineered product.

[brokensymmetry.livejournal.com]

But have you told the water in your body that you love it (http://www.thank-water.net/english/) lately?

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

How long has it taken other snake-oil phenomena to die?

Dude, 3½ years is nothin'. You can still get bracelets containing magnets that are supposed to have therapeutic effects, and that idea's been around since before the French Revolution. (Look up Franz Mesmer for more ducky fun!)

No thermometer necessary

[bungo.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, i don't have thermometers that are that precise.

You could try a double boiler arrangement. Ordinary tap water in a large open pot P on a stove. Magic water in a significantly smaller[1], thin-walled and conductive[2] vessel V suspended in pot P, so it's well clear of the bottom.

Turn up heat, until water in P is just boiling. Observe water in V. Is it boiling? Claim is bogus. Is it not, even though water in P is merrily boiing away? Claim could have merit.

Temperature in P's water is now T_1.[3] T_1 is probably not 100.0 degrees, but their claim is only that boiling point of Magic Water is greater than T_1.

I'd be interested in hearing if/how this works.


[1] There needs to be enough space in the pot that the ordinary water can convect and mix and so be all the same temperature, T_1.

[2] So that there's good conduction across the vessel wall,
and the temperature on the inside and outside walls of V are very similar.

[3] There's a bunch of thermodynamics I'm ignoring. Probably you need a pure liquid water-vapour mixture in P.