Microwaved Water

[mith]

Not my project…but nontheless a pretty interesting conclusion was drawn-

http://www.execonn.com/sf/

Perhaps some more plants would be helpful.

[SororSaudade]

it seems to me you can´t take any conclusions based on only two plants… it may have nothing to do with the water.
Are there any more details available?

[mith]

I didn’t do the experiment, but I was thinking the same thing, they probably should have used more plants and perhaps used more controls.

[SororSaudade]

I know you didn’t do it. I was just asking if you knew something more about it.
I totally agree with you about the controls… it could be very interesting though.

[teenager witch]

Is there any difference between micrwaved water and purified water?
maybe microwaved water absorbes some radiation?

[Linn]

Interesting 🙂
But are those new cuttings or were the plants newly potted?
I would try it with more established plants and repeat several more times to be conclusive.

[mith]

@witch

pretty sure radiation can’t be stored, it gets radiated away…radioactive materials is another thing…

[teenager witch]

ok..maybe plant died because there is no oxygen in the water.when we heat water,all oxygen molecules escape.

[mith]

Plants don’t breathe oxygen from water.

[teenager witch]

ya it was silly of me to say that

[MrMistery]

In theory they do, but the disolved oxygen from the water you add would not contribute significantly to the total oxygen in the soil. The air simply difuses from the atmosphere into the soil…

[AstusAleator]

the "microwaved water" plant looks like it was defoliated… I dont’ see any evidence of the former leaves having fallen off, they simply aren’t there, and the stems look like they’ve been clipped.

[Death Camas]

I must agree that more plants as not only controls, but as experimental subjects should be used.

I am perplexed by the microwaved water though. I was under the impression that microwave heating was effective by transfer of energy from water molecules as they vibrated when subjected to the microwaves’ energy wavelength, without changing the water molecule structure.

Have I been wrong in my interpretation? Are the alarmists correct?

[mith]

No, a microwave is about the same as vigorously stirring the molecules to add kinetic energy.

[Zymo Research]

I would like to see the DNA and Methylation patterns of 2 "clone plants" analyzed after this experiment. Any takers? I’ll provide free kits for analysis.

[xeric]

The photos were photoshopped, as the update at the bottom of the web-page suggests. There was no picture of the microwaved-water plant looking healhy. The photos labelled day 1,3, & 5 were all taken at the same time on day 5 according to the camera date stamp. The day 1 and 3 pictures of the MW plant were created from the sick-looking day 5 MW plant photo, by pasting on images of healthy leaves copied from photos of the purified-water plant.

[blcr11]

For a sixth grade project, I would say this came out all right. I would have given it an A even though I don’t agree that the data support a conclusion that the "energy structure of water" is different in microwaved vs boiled water. I think it far more likely that there is something toxic in the microwaved water (plasticizer is the first, and obvious candidate, as the linked post mentioned). You’re not going to do this in elementary school unless one of your parents is an analytical chemist or toxicologist, but I’d want to see what’s in both kinds of water before making any conclusions. And–as most everyone has said–when these kinds of things are done in industry, for example, you use hunderds, if not thousands of plants, not just two. This too is beyond the capacity of a sixth grader.

For a simple experiment for a sixth grader to do, I think they did a great job, and it certainly generated a lot of discussion. I would call the experiment (and the experience) a success.

[blcr11]

I hadn’t read the comment about photoshop. I did think that the day one pictures looked similar, but my index of suspicion wasn’t very high. Pity if an adult (or even a clever 6th grader) used photoshop to doctor the evidence. If true, that A would have to be changed to an F. Wouldn’t be the first time in the history of science that evidence was doctored to suit the conclusion.

[blcr11]

Well now, I’m looking for those time and date stamps and I don’t see them on the photographs on the linked site. So, I don’t know what to make of xeric’s comments. I do note that the photos of the pairs of plants seem to be very (suspiciously?) similar, but I don’t see any time/date stamps.

[xeric]

The photos with the date stamp (maybe that is not the correct term) are the set of actual photos at the end of the page, the ones which were ‘spliced’ to make the pictures at the top. I was able to copy those pics to my computer. Maybe it is related to the software for my own digital camera on my computer, but those photos all had date and time information as well as other info on the camera settings. The pics were clearly photoshopped including the use of a cloning tool to erase a leaf in the day three pictures.

[blcr11]

I looked at them all (pics at the top and pics at the bottom) before, though I wouldn’t swear that I didn’t overlook one or more, and didn’t find any time/date stamps. So I pulled one over to my computer to see if that made any difference, and still no stamps that I can see. I didn’t try and use any digital processing software–camera, photoshop, or otherwise; just "save picture" and looking at it in the microsoft photoeditor. Now, my copy of the file has a time and date stamp which, not surprisingly, is today’s, but I don’t see anything on the photo itself indicating when the original was taken. I may try to see if opening one of them in photoshop makes a difference. I’m not disputing the claim. I just can’t confirm it.

[xeric]

I downloaded another photo from that website. First I looked at it with Adobe and I couldn’t see any place that would have shown the date and time. Then I looked at it with my camera software. The file name is slightly different from the one I downloaded when I looked at it last year (image number the same, though) and there is no longer any shooting information with the file. I don’t know how this works. Previous image was IMG_2634.jpg
Camera Model Name
Canon EOS 10D
Shooting Date/Time
3/9/2006 1:41:32 PM
Shooting Mode
Shutter Speed Priority AE
Tv( Shutter Speed )
1/200
Av( Aperture Value )
4.0
Metering Mode
Evaluative

Now it is tn-IMG_2634.jpg, with no shooting info.

(edited to add: the reason it had no shooting info was because I downloaded the thumbnail instead of the actual photo. The photo does still ahve the shooting info.)

[blcr11]

I guess there’s not much point in my trying to open any of the images with my Cannon software, then. If there was any incriminating evidence, it has been removed it seems. Not sure how one does that, actually, but I guess there must be jpeg editors that give access to header information or something like that. I tried to open one of the jpegs in notepad hoping to see at least partial header information that might be interpretable, but all I got (and I wasn’t expecting to see much) was gibberish.

[xeric]

That was a mistake – the file I copied was just a thumbnail; that’s why it had no shooting info. If I click on the thumbnail and then copy the full-sized image it still has the shooting info in the software for my Canon camera. The image number 2633 has this info:
Shooting Date/Time
3/9/2006 1:41:10 PM

You can see that the day 1 and day 5 composite photos are really the same photo, IMG2634, which has been photoshopped. The microwaved water plant in that image has a flipped copy of the of the image 2660 (which is the purified water plant) pasted onto it. And day 3 is the image 2633 with different cut and paste leaves, with one leaf from the previous image removed by cloning.

Not a big deal, except that some people online seemed to take it seriously at the time.

[mith]

Actually I just found out that snopes has a nice article on it.

[mothorc]

Cool results but these experiment are wrong with the control samples.
The result may change if you boil the purified water (using an electric or gas cooking stove).
The concentration of Dissolve Oxygen may be important, not only directly to the plant but also affect soil microbial population.
However, I will confirm some physical properties of microwaved water, I’m in tissue culture. Oh my God, that’s impossible!!

[jpsinger]

i recently conducted a similar experiment for my high school freshman science project. i had two plants for each variable, one set being watered with just tap water, the other two plants being watered by water that had been boiled in a glass mug in the microwave then allowed to cool. it ended up that it didnt affect the growth at all.

[Author]

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