Can Water Become Magnetized on a Magnet?

[fbsthreads]

i know you can ionize water to make it magnetic, but some people claim if you put a glass of normal water on a magnet (so the water is in a magnetic field) it will become magnetized in a few minutes.

my guess would be that water particles are too free to become magnetically aligned, and so it won't work.

what do you people know?

 

[russ_watters]

Since water molecules are lopsided, they are magnetic. When water freezes, they line up according to their magnetic poles. I guess holding a magnet to a glass of water would line the molecules up a little, but it wouldn't be permanent.

 

[Mk]

Paramagnetic? I've never seen water as doing this before.

 

[4newton]

There are flow meters that use this electromagnetic principal of liquids. I looked into making a knot meter for boats using this. It works but the cost is too high compared with other methods.

 

[Chi Meson]

You can create a net magnetic field by having any charged substance move in a direction. If you ionized water and caused ot to swirl in a circle, then you would have moving charges and hence a magnetic dipole field.

As already noted by Russ, water is already "magnetic", but the magnetic dipole moments of the water molecule are very small.

Russ:
here's a point I can't remember: is water diamagnetic or paramagnetic? Mk said "para" but I thought it was "dia."

edit:
OK, I looked it up, water is "diamagnetic," buyt doesn't that mean the natural dipole moment of water should be zero? It's been too long!

 

[Mk]

Ahh, yes, I was asking a question actually.

 

[russ_watters]

Chemistry ain't my thing guys, and when you start using those big words, I need to Google them too... But I'll take a stab at it: water is a liquid and therefore, (I think) only diamagnetic at a molecular level (hydrogen bonds) - as opposed to a metal rod that can be magnetized as a whole.

 

[Chi Meson]

Yeh, it's not exactly life-changing is it? My anxiety grows proportionally to the mound of things I've forgotten.

 

[Mk]

Yeh, it's not exactly life-changing is it? My anxiety grows proportionally to the mound of things I've forgotten.

Heh, me too.

I guess you must be happy, Red Sox won.

 

[Pieter Kuiper]

Water is diamagnetic, as you can see on the following web page:
http://www.matchrockets.com/water/diamagh2o.html

 

[Chi Meson]

Water is diamagnetic, as you can see on the following web page:
http://www.matchrockets.com/water/diamagh2o.html

Nice site. It has a great demo too. thnx!

 

[Gokul43201]

You can not "magnetize" a para- or dia-magnet as their B-H curves are not hysteretic. To magnetize something, you want to have a a residual magnetization in the absence of a applied field. This can be an energy minimizing state only if there is an energy associated with some mechanism such as domain wall breaking (ie: in a ferro-magnet).

 

[Chi Meson]

Right! I was just about to say that!

 

[FranZFenX]

Look, i am a 12 year-old boy, and i need help with my homework. I need you to tell me the steps to magnetize water, i have to make a project for a science fair

 

[fizz_it]

Hope this helps

http://www.exploratorium.edu/snacks/diamagnetism_www/index.html