Silly / Absurd

#90 · Divining rod

Hold two chopsticks loosely and walk slowly across the garden. When they cross, there's either water below or a major ley line. Science.

Water dowsing has been tested repeatedly under controlled conditions and performs no better than chance. That said, wandering slowly around your own garden on a Sunday afternoon holding a chopstick in each hand, waiting for something to happen, is a genuinely pleasant way to spend an hour, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.

Why it works

The rods do move, which is the interesting part. It is the ideomotor effect: tiny muscular movements produced below the threshold of conscious awareness, driven by what you expect or hope to find. The same mechanism drives Ouija boards and the old pendulum-over-the-palm trick. Dowsers are not usually lying - they genuinely do not feel themselves doing it, which is precisely what makes it such a good demonstration of how unreliable introspection can be.

Tips & warnings

• A fine garden game for children, and a genuinely good way to introduce the idea of a controlled test - hide a bucket of water and see whether it can actually be found.
• Do not dig a well, a soakaway or anything else on the strength of it.
• For real buried services, hire a surveyor with a cable avoidance tool. They use electromagnetics, not hazel twigs.