How does a witching rod work

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. Since the marble was in a state of unstable equilibrium, gravity was able to amplify a small movement invisible to humans the bump from the gentle breeze into a large movement the marble rolling down the side of the roof.

To the naked human eye, it looks like a power agent exists only on one side of the house and is drawing the marble towards it. If we didn't understand the concept of unstable equilibrium, we may be tempted to say that there is underground water only on the one side of the house which pulled the marble down that side. Belief in water dowsing operates on this type of misunderstanding.

In many areas of the world, water dowsing seems to really work. In such areas, the location that the dowser points out indeed leads to a productive well. However, such areas of the world have so much groundwater close to the surface that any location will yield a productive well.

The situation is like filling a box with only green socks and then asking a magician to close his eyes and use his magic powers to find a green sock in the box. The U. In , we decided to put in a deeper well. He held it by the small end and let it bob up and down until it stopped bobbing and swung side-to-side. The more times it bobs up and down, the deeper the water. Some wells have been less than feet. But many have been feet deep or more.

Read more: Ever wonder why there needs to be a pump at the bottom of a deep well? Divining Rods When dowsing for water, Lynn uses two steel welding rods, bent in L shape.

He holds them with the long ends level and apart from one another—holding them loosely so they can swivel freely. They are attracted to his body and point back toward him. You can use just one rod, and it works just as well as if you use two. Dowsing rods point toward you when you are directly over water. They swing away from you when you walk past it. They know they are not doing something to make those rods move.

Then Lynn began locating wells for family members, neighbors and friends. In frustration, he asked Lynn to locate water. Lynn found a spot just 8 feet away from the dry hole. The well driller drilled feet at that spot and got 18 gallons a minute.

When the grateful rancher paid him, Lynn realized his services were valuable. He saved people thousands of dollars, not having dry holes, and so started charging a fee.

Word got around, and more people asked him to find water. People can drill wells just about anywhere and hit water. Water dowsing, sometimes also called water witching, is the practice of using a dowsing rod to walk through an area in an attempt to find water and other items that may exist below the dirt.

The dowsing rod sometimes also called a divining rod may look like a Y-shaped branch, and purportedly can also be used to find items such as pipes, gas lines or empty conduits. When the dowser feels a pull on the branch, or when the wire rods cross, the rod is supposedly telling the user that there is some object under the ground.

Some people claim to have success with dowsing rods, but by and large the field of dowsing is controversial. Dowsing is often associated with pseudoscience and the spiritual world, and some studies show that using these rods may not be any more successful than chance alone. Skeptics often attribute dowsing movements to the ideomotor effect, where the body sometimes acts reflexively to an idea without actually taking a conscious action.

A common example of the ideomotor effect in action is a Ouija board. Even though no one who is touching the triangle is intentionally moving the centerpiece, the ideomotor effect means there may still be unconscious reflexive movements at play.