Using Magnets (Yes Magnets) to Make Wine Taste Better-I was a Sceptic

While I am intensely sceptical of magnets as a wine improvement, Bob Foster has been a respected poster here for a long long time. Insulting people who add value to this group is the quick road to the killfile. Dale

Dale Williams Drop "damnspam" to reply

The guy that you are bad mouthing, signs his name on his posts and has been doing so for a long time in this news group. The guiding light for news group posting is to lurk for 3 months before posting and then test the water very gently. I suggest an apology to Bob would be in order.

Wine contains no ferrous materials.

End of story. Quit posting crap.

I find myself in a quandary with this post. IMO (not humble here), believing in the effect of magnets on wine is at best misguided since the whole idea is unscientific and any "evidence" is anecdotal. I guess the use of the word "nonsense" is a bit pugnacious even if that would be my *personal* opinion but the tone of the post objecting to Bob's post is unfortunately not in accord with the usual level of politeness of this group.

"Uranium Committee" in news: snipped-for-privacy@posting.google.com...

Well, UC, first, it need not be ferrous material to be ferromagnetic, or otherwise magnetostatically sensitive. Second, wines (especially red wines, and double-especially good red wines) are full of natural plant minerals including Iron (symbol Fe as in ferrous), which along with the other minerals happens to be good for you. Third, I myself have seen no real evidence, nor any theoretical basis, for magnets being useful for wine. Fourth, as someone very insightful (an experienced food scientist at the University of California at Davis) pointed out to Bob Foster's post about this on an HTML site, it is necessary, and difficult, to design tests that will get at what is really going on, and remove participant bias, assuming that anyone wants to know what is really going on; and Fifth, with magical-sounding consumer products in general, the people most interested in the product often have motivations different from determining what is really going on. I have seen this in the world of consumer audio technology, for example, where lots of techniques and gadgets get promoted that don't fit the technical worldview of 19-year-old trainee engineers who are quick to dismiss them; some of these techniques or gadgets do work, but sorting out which ones do, for real, is not always even in the interest of the people who do the talking about them.

Ironically (in reference to UC's post), ferrOUS materials are NOT ferromagnetic but diamagnetic. FerrIC materials OTOH are the gold standard for ferromagnetism, though by no means the only ferromagnetic material, as you so rightly point out, Max.

Gasp!! Do you mean that my deoxygenated tantalum-praseodymium alloy,

6-gauge speaker cable doesn't have the negative impedence* that they advertised? I'm gonna ask for my boxtops back...

Mark Lipton

• Yes, impedence is a complex number, but I couldn't come up with the corresponding bit of ridiculousness.

"Mark Lipton" in news:iQDid.47105$HA.8178@attbi_s01...

Since we're now deep into material magnetic effects, one of the more amazing is diamagnetism (certain materials display it). It repels any incident magnetic field at all. In 1975 I built a machine to synthesize this effect in a ball 10cm diameter, using three axes of flat magnetic windings, and electronics. When activated, the ball would repel from any magnet -- either pole, any direction. Further, you could press a button to reset its reference point in space and then it would "lock" there, in free air, if any strong magnet was nearby. If you then moved it in any direction you would feel a "restoring" force pulling it back to its equilibrium position. (The ball was hand-held, but not self-contained because of the power necessary to drive its coils; connected by umbilical cable was a box the size of a six-bottle wine box. Like Dujac's or Tollot-Beaut's six-bottle boxes.) The idea was due to A. J. Lieberman. I put a summary on sci.electronics circa

1987 and have it on file (but I don't know if the major archives got it).

Some of you may think that's far-fetched!

[But my main point, to reiterate, was not to say that many consumer gimmicks are "snake oil," in the traditional US phrase, which of course is true; rather, that some of them are not; and more importantly, few people talk seriously, in either direction, about finding out.]

Sorry!

"Max Hauser" in news: snipped-for-privacy@corp.supernews.com...

Meant M. A. Lieberman. Not to be confused with Abbott Joseph Liebling. (Foodian slip.)

To those of you who rose to my defense, thank you. But I learned long ago to pay no attention to the scum who post nasty notes but lack the courage to sign their true name. Don't hold your breath waiting for an aplogy. It will never arrive.