Dowsing for water

[santaman2000]

...

Pieces of bent metal
In order to 'detect' anything, you need to have some sort of sensory system. Metal is just metal. No sense organs or strucutres of any sort. It doesn't matter what shape you bend it into, it can't detect anything...

So my radio antenae don't really work?

 

[santaman2000]

...The hazel twig.
This has been cut from a living thing. Therefore it is dead. Any sensory structures it might have are now also dead. However, plants are known to be resilient, so lets say we have a freshly cut bit of hazel in which the tissues are arguably still alive. Ok. Now, most of a bit of wood like this is made of lignified cells (wood, to a layman). Lignified cells are dead, even in a living plant. The living cells are in a layer just beneath the bark, but in a branch or trunk these cells are concerned almost exclusively with the transport of fluids within the plant. They are not equipped for detecting anything external to the plant. Granted, there are pores, but these are for transpiration (regulating the rate of water loss, and some limited gas exchange) and have no sensory capacity. Finally, the living cells are, except for the pores, covered with a layer of bark, which is made of dead cells. There is no way that the hazel twig, even if nominally alive, can detect water. Finally, just like the metal, it isn't capable of sudden and spontaneous movement either...

So when you plant that "dead" twig (cutting) it cain't sprout a new root into the soil? The upper part cain't grow towards the sun and sprout new leaves? It cain't "detect" which direction is the right one for the roots (towards water and nutrients) and which is toward the sun? I guess my plants really haven't grown any.

 

[320ccc]

dowsing for water is a bit more esoteric than witching for wire (or pipes, buried cans, septic tanks, etc.)

witching works, period.

but it has its limitations. go off across a yard looking for a buried cable and pass beneath an aerial cable and your wires will spread.
it can't tell you what or how deep the thing you located is. you didn't inject a signal at one end or the other.
you are going to do some serious spadework investigating the results of your detection.

you are required to pair the results with conjecture or knowledge.
for instance,you are looking for a water line going to a house.
you likely know where the supply entrance is or where the street valve is or both.
using your wires you can then establish the path that the pipe layers took.
luckily pipe is straight or has wide-radius curves.

cable or wire is different, more flexible. and the people who put it in the ground aren't necessarily following any particular protocol when they bury it.
loops of wire at a pole our terminal have killed people. especially when using power equipment instead of hand digging.

dowsing is a dicier propostion for me personally. i've done it and seen it done many times. i'm just not as confident in my abilities with a stick as i am with a wire.

just because it doesn't seem "scientific" or "logical" doesn't mean it's not true.
maybe it just means you can't do it.

that's no big deal. i'm sure you have other skills.