Category: Earth Science Published: April 15, In the sense that it finds underground water, water dowsing does not work. Water dowsing involves the claim that a person can locate underground sources of water without using any scientific instruments. Typically, the person that is dowsing holds sticks or rods and walks around a property in the hopes that the rods will dip, twitch, or cross when he walks over the underground water.
The dowsing rods do indeed move, but not in response to anything underground. They are simply responding to the random movements of the person holding the rods. The rods are typically held in a position of unstable equilibrium, so that a small movement gets amplified into a big movement.
The movements of the rods do not seem like they are coming from the small vibrations in the dowser's arms, since these vibrations are so small and the rod's movements are so large. From the false assumption that the movements of the rods are not coming from the small random vibrations of the dowser's arms, people then make the illogical leap that the movements must therefore be caused by something powerful that is out of sight, i.
Since successfully locating underground water can save a farmer the trouble of digging several wells that end up dry, and since scientific approaches can be expensive, there is a strong incentive for people to want water dowsing to work. Unstable equilibrium describes a state where all the forces on an object cancel out but the slightest deviation from the point of equilibrium causes the object to fly off.
For instance, if you place a marble on exactly the top edge of a sharply-ridged roof, the marble will sit there motionless since the forces pulling it down either side of the roof cancel out.
However, if the slightest breeze blows past the marble, it will give the marble a small bump toward one side of the roof. The forces will no longer cancel and the marble will shoot down one side of the roof. It is often used to look for water, and farmers in California have been known to ask dowsers to find ways to irrigate their land. Yet despite many anecdotal reports of success, dowsing has never been shown to work in controlled scientific tests.
They do. It looks and feels as if the movements are involuntary. The same phenomenon has been shown to lie behind movements of objects on a Ouija board. Baker specialises in dowsing for hidden archaeological structures. By the time I had finished my couple of hours with him, my scepticism about dowsing was getting shaky.
When I arrived, Baker was standing in front of an array of blue flags he had planted in a grassy area in the castle grounds. Baker held his L-shaped dowsing rods like a pair of six-shooters and walked back and forth across the lines. When he exited, they uncrossed. At this point, I was neither impressed nor surprised.
He could see the line of flags, and he knew what he expected to happen. It would only take a small unconscious movement of his hands to make the rods cross, I thought. There is an immense amount of water in aquifers below the earth's surface. In fact, there is a over a thousand times more water in the ground than is in all the world's rivers and lakes.
Here we introduce you to the basics about groundwater. Groundwater will normally look clear and clean because the ground naturally filters out particulate matter. But did you know that natural and human-induced chemicals can be found in groundwater even if appears to be clean? Below is a list of some contaminants that can occur in groundwater. Wells are extremely important to all societies. In many places wells provide a reliable and ample supply of water for home uses, irrigation, and industries.
Where surface water is scarce, such as in deserts, people couldn't survive and thrive without groundwater, and people use wells to get at underground water. Groundwater is crutial to millions of Americans as well as many more worldwide. Groundwater provides drinking water to many.
Thus, having reliably clean groundwater is of concern for many throughout the world. But, groundwater can become contaminated with chemicals, biologic organisms, and other possibly-harmful agents. Artesian water is really not different from other groundwater, except for the fact that it flows to the land surface because pressure in the rocks underground force it to the surface. But, having water flow to the surface naturally is a handy way to tap groundwater resources.
Groundwater is a valuable resource both in the United States and throughout the world. Groundwater depletion, a term often defined as long-term water-level declines caused by sustained groundwater pumping, is a key issue associated with groundwater use. Many areas of the United States are experiencing groundwater depletion. Most of us don't have to look for water. We grew up either in big cities where there was a public water supply, or in small towns or on farms where the water came from wells.
But there are some people to whom finding a new supply of water is vitally important. Skip to main content. Search Search. Water Science School. Water Dowsing. Groundwater Photo Gallery Learn about groundwater through pictures Visit the gallery.
0コメント