Water is the most common and important material in nature but exactly what is water on earth and what properties does it have?

It's a more challenging problem than people think.  

The changes in properties of water under the action of a magnetic field have been studied for a hundred years but never solved.  In new research reported in the November 2008 issue of Science in China Series G- Physics, Mechanics&Astronomy,  the authors collected and studied the light spectra of water and its features using the spectrum techniques of light for giving an insight into the features of molecular structure in water and seeking the mechanism of magnetization of water.  These spectra may embody the features of molecular, atomic and electronic structures of water, thus giving an insight into the structures of atoms and molecules in water and providing some accurate and credible data for the features of water.

Professor Pang Xiao-Feng and Deng Bo studied the properties of water, and their changes under the action of a magnetic field were gathered by the spectrum techniques of infrared, Raman, visible, ultraviolet and X-ray lights, which may give an insight into molecular and atomic structures of water.

It was found that some properties of water were changed, and a lot of new and strange phenomena were discovered after magnetization. Magnetized water really has magnetism, which has been verified by a peak shift of X-ray diffraction of magnetized water +Fe3O4 hybrid relative to that of pure water + Fe3O4 hybrid, that is, a saturation and memory effect. 

"In this work, we collect and study the light spectra of water and its features using some modern instruments and techniques, for instance, the spectrum techniques of infrared, Raman, visible, ultraviolet and X-ray lights in secs. 1 and 2. From these spectra we obtained that there are plenty of linear and closed hydrogen-bonded chains of molecules, except for free water molecules, in water, which are responsible for conductivity and magnetization of water, respectively. At the same time, a lot of new and strange properties of magnetized water, such as, the saturation and memory effect, irreversible effect of infrared absorptions, exponential increase of ultraviolet absorption, more increase of infrared absorption as well as decrease of hydrophobicity of water, were obtained. These properties are helpful to reveal the mechanism of magnetization of water.

"Meanwhile, we can indicate the magnetized effect of water by increament of infrared spectrum of absorption," noted Principal Investigator Pang Xiao-Feng, professor of University of Electronic Science and Technology of China. "This research is the first paper to carefully observe the mechanisms of magnetization of water."

In the experiments, it was found that magnetized water has an evident saturation, memory effect and magnetism through the experimental comparison of X-ray diffraction of nanoFe3O4 plus magnetized water with that of nanoFe3O4 plus pure water. Some new and unusual phenomena of water were also discovered, for example, the strange irreversible effect of infrared absorption in the temperature increasing and decreasing processes at high temperature, the exponential increase of ultraviolet absorption in the range of 200-300 nm and the existence of six peaks at 3037, 3165, 3280, 3415, 3540 and 3665 cm1 in the range of 3000-4000 cm1[1-19], which do not alter with the water temperature and the externally applied fields, thus are an intrinsic feature of water.

We here investigated the variation of surface tension force and the soaking degree of water to materials through measuring the contact angles of magnetized and pure water on the surface of the materials including copper, graphite and muscovite in the range of 0°-180° under the condition of humidity of 27° using OCA40 Micro optical-vision instrument.

The result shows that the magnetic field may change the hydrophobicity of water. The extenuation of contact angles of magnetized water is due to the increase of polarized effect and the changes of distribution and clustering structure of water molecules after magnetization.

Professor Pang thinks the above properties of magnetized and pure water are helpful for revealing the structural features of water molecules and verifying the correctness of the mechanism and theory of magnetization of water proposed by himself[15-19].

Based on the molecular structure of water Pang further established the theory of magnetization of water according to the theories of proton conductivity in the hydrogen bonded systems of ice[17-22] and magnetism of matter.

Authors further noted: "If water is exposed in a magnetic field, these closed hydrogen-bonded chains become some ring electric-current or "molecular electric-current" elements with magnetism due to the proton conductivity in them under the action of Lorentz force of the magnetic field[19-24,25], and the magnetic interactions of these "molecular electric-current" elements with each other or with the externally applied magnetic-field result in the changes of distribution and features of water molecules and the magnetization of water."

Thus these experimental results verify that Pang's theory of magnetization of water is correct and credible. In addition, there may be significant evidence if more techniques are used.