A Little Glass of Water: The Scientific Breakthrough Trump Unveiled Aboard the USS George Washington

[Everybody Wang Chung]

I can't believe MAGA entrusted this bumbling idiot with our nuclear codes. We are, without a doubt, the laughing stock of the world right now. I really wish I was making this up.

During an incoherent ramble aboard a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier today, President Trump took a courageous stand against two of the world's oldest and most misunderstood conspiracies - magnets and water. Apparently unburdened by the laws of physics, and much to the shock and dismay of the entire world, the orange buffoon delivered an insane lecture suggesting that if one were to simply drop a little glass of water on a high-tech magnetic catapult or elevator, poof, the entire $13 billion system would be instantly disabled.

Not only did Trump fearlessly advocate for replacing the high tech aircraft carrier with 1940s-era steam and hydraulics systems (that the Navy has been retiring over the last 50 years), but Trump also blamed China for the world's reliance on magnets China. Huh/what?! Trump's entire address was a testament to his awesome ability to confidently reject millennia of human knowledge and science in favor of the bizarre and crazy. Trump even asked the top-ranking general to publicly co-sign his plan to build a less-functional aircraft carrier.

From the article:

Speaking aboard the USS George Washington aircraft carrier during his tour of East Asia, the president appeared to suggest—in a largely incoherent speech—that he is pushing for aircraft carriers to use “steam for the catapults” and hydraulics for elevators, while wrongly claiming that water can disable magnets.

The elderly president was talking about the magnetic catapults used to launch planes from the latest Navy super carriers, the USS Gerald R. Ford class, and the electromagnetic elevators used to move weaponry to the flight deck. Both systems double the speed with which planes can be armed and launched but slowed the delivery and commissioning of the $13 billion flagship of the class.

“You know, the new thing is magnets. So instead of using hydraulic that can be hit by lightning and it’s fine. You take a little glass of water, you drop it on magnets, I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Trump said.

“So, you know, the elevators come up in the new carriers—I think I’m going to change it, by the way—they have magnets. Every tractor has hydraulic, every excavator, every excavating machine of any kind has hydraulic. But somebody decided to use magnets.”

The 79-year-old president then stumbled over his words and failed to complete a coherent sentence before moving on and asking the watching troops whether they preferred hydraulics or magnets.

Trump then called out to a “top-ranking general” in the crowd for his opinion before continuing his tirade against the 2,000-year-old technology.

“I’m going to sign an executive order. When we build aircraft carriers, it’s steam for the catapults and it’s hydraulic for the elevators. We’ll never have a problem,” Trump said. “He agrees. Everybody agrees. But, ahh, these people in Washington.”

Trump also suggested that the global reliance on magnets was some kind of conspiracy orchestrated by China.

“You know, China intelligently went and they sort of took a monopoly of the world’s magnets, and nobody needed magnets until they convinced everybody 20 years ago, ‘Let’s all do magnets,’” Trump said. “There were many other ways that the world could have gone.”

Ironically, it was the Chinese who first made use of magnets as far back as 200 B.C.

Trump’s hatred of magnets even dates back to at least January 2024, when he once again pushed the bizarre claim, “Give me a glass of water, let me drop it on the magnets, that’s the end of the magnets,” during a campaign speech in Iowa.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/Trump-79- ... -the-navy/

[canpakes]

[Chap]

Responses to Trump's "water and magnets' speech'

Level 0: Yup, utter crap. He doesn't know what he is talking about. Water does not stop magnets operating. The use of magnetic fields on aircraft carriers to power launch systems, elevators and so on, is just fine. May I point out that sailors have known for about 1,000 years (starting in China) that you can use a magnetic compass at sea for direction finding, and that water does not mess it up?

Level 1: Just a little bit of physics: Trump may have heard from somewhere that, like all materials, water does react to a magnetic field. That is not untrue, but in the case of water (and most other substances) the effect is very weak indeed, and for practical purposes is irrelevant in dealing with the extremely strong magnetic fields that act in electric motors, magnetic launch systems and elevators. As usual, his narcissistic self-confidence and tendency to react with hostility to any contradiction of the first idea that he lets into his head means that anybody in the White House who knows about such matters will be too scared of losing their job to tell him. If he ever gets to the stage of preparing an executive order banning the use of magnets on aircraft carriers, one hopes that a technical expert high in the military will be prepared to take early retirement as the price of sparing the USA from being made to look like a country governed by morons.

Level 2: Some classical physics, of the kind that in my country should be within the capacity of any teenager taking a physics major in high school. Please note that this explanation has a warning on the packet saying "This is a simplified picture, of heuristic value only. At this level, you really need quantum physics to understand what is happening, and to 'do the math' of getting quantitative answers."

(a) Basically, a magnetic field is the consequence of an electric current going round in a circle. Take your right hand, bend your fingers so they are part of a circle. Then if the fingers point round in the direction of the electric current (thought of as being a movement of positive charge), the direction of the magnetic field produced is in the direction of your thumb.

(b) Atoms may, in classical terms, be thought of as having (negatively charged) electrons orbiting round the massive (positively charged) nucleus at the centre of the atom, just like planets orbit round the sun. So each orbiting electron is a little circle of electric current, and will generate a magnetic field. Because the electron is a negative charge, it has the same effect as a positive current in the opposite direction to its movement. So to apply the rule in (a), curl the fingers of your right hand against the direction of the electron moving round its orbit, and your thumb will indicate the direction of the magnetic field generated.

(c) Electron orbits in atoms with even numbers of electrons come in pairs, where the directions of electron movements are in opposite directions. So the magnetic fields generated cancel out. Such materials can however be made to show a very weak reaction called 'diamagnetism' if they are put in a magnetic field, so that (for reasons I shall not try to explain), the electrons going one way round the atom speed up a little bit, and those going round the the atom in the other direction tend to slow down, and the magnetic cancelling out effect of pairs of electrons is put slightly out of balance. So the magnetic field applied to the material does have the effect of making the material create a weak magnetic field. This weak magnetic field will act in the opposite direction to the outside magnetic field. As a result, the material will be very slightly pushed away from the device (such as a piece of magnetised iron) creating the magnetic field. Water is weakly diamagnetic, and you can see the small repulsion effect between a magnet and some water in a plastic cup floating on a polystyrene 'raft' in the video shown on this page. (The words are in French, but just watch the video). This is, I think, the effect that Trump may have heard of. But it is negligible for all practical engineering purposes such as the powered devices in aircraft carriers listed above.

(d) If however there is an odd number of electrons in an atom, each atom will have a small magnetic field due to the effect of the 'unpaired' electron. But pairs of atoms tend to arrange themselves so that their magnetic fields cancel out, so there is no overall magnetic effect. But if the substance is put in a magnetic field, the atoms tend to change their alignment slightly so that their magnetic fields move towards lining up and tend to reinforce the applied field. This effect is called 'paramagnetism', and is shown by materials such as aluminum. Of course all the atoms in the material also react like the atoms in (c) - but the paramagnetic reaction is stronger, and more than cancels out the diamagnetic effect. As a result a piece of aluminum will be slightly attracted by a magnet. This effect is not noticeable in everyday life.

(e) Finally we come to the well-known effect called 'ferromagnetism' (from Latin ferrum = 'iron'). This is basically paramagnetism on steroids. Atoms in materials such as iron, nickel, cobalt, their alloys, and some alloys of rare-earth metals. have unpaired electrons, so that each atom generates a magnetic field of its own. However (for reasons I shall not try to explain) these atoms have a tendency to settle down so that they do not cancel out each other's fields, but reinforce them. OBVIOUS QUESTION ALERT: why isn't every lump of iron a magnet? Answer: because as the iron cools from its molten state and soldifies, the atoms settled down into little clusters of aligned atoms, and these clusters (domains) have fields in different directions, so they cancel out. However, in a strong magnetic field the domains with favourably aligned atoms tend to grow, by recruiting atoms from neighbouring domains, and when you switch off the external magnetic field the lump of iron retains an overall magnetic effect.

SUMMARY: All atoms, including those in water, exhibit the very weak diamagnetic effect if you put them in a magnetic field - this will tend to push them away weakly from a nearby magnet. However, in materials with an odd number of orbital electrons, this effect is cancelled out by the considerably stronger paramagnetic effect, which will attract them (still rather weakly) towards a nearby magnet. In materials with a ferromagnetic response (think iron and a few others, including rare earth metals) the basic paramagnetic effect becomes much, much stronger. If we are thinking about power engineering, ferromagnetism is the only important effect, and we can forget about water completely.

[PHYSICSGUY: Like you, I should mostly be doing other things than giving science lessons to DJ Trump, which he will never read. On a first read through, the above text looks OK to me. But please check it through and correct/criticise/supplement freely.]

[Gunnar]

It is remarkable how adamantly Trump resists any evidence no matter how abundant and incontrovertible that contradicts whatever he initially decided to believe about anything, no matter what. He seems constitutionally incapable of accepting that he could ever be mistaken about anything! Will he go so far as to fire any physicist, or any other type of scientist who dares to correct him even in the area of their own expertise? I have no doubt that he will! He has been corrected on this issue countless times already by qualified scientists, but he cannot even begin to acknowledge that, apparently. I suspect that even if someone demonstrated in front of his very eyes that magnets work in water, he would still try to deny it, or, at least, fire the demonstrator for publicly exposing his ignorance.

[Chap]

He has been corrected on this issue countless times already by qualified scientists, but he cannot even begin to acknowledge that, apparently.

I think that the problem is that he is not entirely wrong. Yes, water does have a reaction to an externally imposed magnetic field, and that reaction generates a magnetic field opposing the external field. "So I'm right, like I always am" says Trump.

But the effect is only a diamagnetic reaction, as explained in my post above. Such reactions are tiny and totally negligible compared to the immensely powerful ferromagnetic effects found in engineering applications of magnetism in the power launch systems, elevators etc. in aircraft carriers that he is talking about. However, even to understand the first two sentences in this paragraph is probably beyond Trump's span of attention, assuming that he was willing to listen to anyone who begins with the words "Mr President, I am afraid that you are mistaken. Let me explain why ..."

[Gunnar]

He has been corrected on this issue countless times already by qualified scientists, but he cannot even begin to acknowledge that, apparently.

I think that the problem is that he is not entirely wrong. Yes, water does have a reaction to an externally imposed magnetic field, and that reaction generates a magnetic field opposing the external field. "So I'm right, like I always am" says Trump.

But the effect is only a diamagnetic reaction, as explained in my post above. Such reactions are tiny and totally negligible compared to the immensely powerful ferromagnetic effects found in engineering applications of magnetism in the power launch systems, elevators etc. in aircraft carriers that he is talking about. However, even to understand the first two sentences in this paragraph is probably beyond Trump's span of attention, assuming that he was willing to listen to anyone who begins with the words "Mr President, I am afraid that you are mistaken. Let me explain why ..."

Yes, I think you're right. His colossally narcissistic ego seems to automatically turn off or severely limit his attention span immediately upon hearing the words "Mr. President, am afraid you are mistaken." It doesn't seem to matter about what or how egregiously he is mistaken. This, I am convinced, severely cripples the functionality of government and effective decision making because any data or evidence presented to him that he doesn't want to hear, no matter how incontrovertible, is likely to result in Trump summarily dismissing or firing whoever reported it to him or was responsible for gathering and documenting it.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

The utter pieces of trash on this board who voted for Shitler would do well to read Wang’s article, and then follow-up with Chap’s excellent post. But after a quarter century engaging these hubristic fools I’ve given up hope they can learn from learning. They hate, and I’m talking a visceral hate of a thousand suns, reading for comprehension. As we’re seeing, once again, they only learn when it directly affects them. Nothing, absolutely nothing, penetrates their thick skulls until one day they experience pain.

Well. If the Democrats fail in their attempt to make sure people have food for the holidays, let’s hope gawd fills their Magass tummies when they’re praying for relief.

- Doc

[Some Schmo]

let’s hope gawd fills their Magass tummies when they’re praying for relief.

You'd like to think you'd have sympathy for people who are starving, even if they're starving because of their own stupidity.

Yet, here I am, and I can't find any sympathy in my heart for the fuckups who voted for everyone's mutually ensured destruction. “F” them and their whiney problems. Stupidity can be fatal, as they're about to find out. The more people who are victims to the Darwin effect, the better our species will be.

I guess I'm not nice. I don't feel sorry for stupid, even though it's not really their fault. “F” them. I'd have sympathy if their idiocy if it didn't affect me, but it does, so again, “F” them.

[Chap]

May I now ask whether anybody with a sympathetic view of Trump would like to explain why US citizens, and citizens of US allies, should not be very worried by this situation, the evidence for which I set out in my post above:

1. The President has, in words that he uttered in front of a large military audience, and which have not been denied or withdrawn, confidently proclaimed his intention signing an executive order mandating major modifications to crucial elements of very expensive and mission-critical US defense systems such as aircraft carriers.

2. However, his words show that he is deeply ignorant of the basic science behind those defense systems, and does not understand that any such executive order as the one he intends to sign would mandate major and costly modifications to defense systems in order to install obsolete and inferior technology.

3. The fact that he displayed such deep ignorance shows that he is either ignoring advice from scientists qualified in relevant fields, or (even worse) has not seen the need to seek such advice.

C'mon guys - step up to the plate and tell us what you think!

[Gunnar]

Apparently, Trump is willfully, stupidly and dangerously ignorant on almost any branch of basic science, and also on basic history and even basic arithmetic. I would not be greatly surprised to find he also harbors doubts that the earth is really a rotating globe that is part of a heliocentric solar system orbiting a star that is 93 million miles away!

It has long been obvious to me that he hates and disdains both established science and scientists and any other experts who have the effrontery to claim possession of any knowledge, expertise and understanding superior to his own on any subject.