Putting water in a spin harnesses proton magnetism

US scientists have discovered a novel way to order the tiny magnets that are the hydrogen protons in water molecules, which in our drinking glass are completely disordered. Mohsen Arabgol and Tycho Sleator from New York University (NYU) have showed that they can align proton spins by rotating them at very high speeds. They realised that a phenomenon known as the Barnett effect, first demonstrated in electrons in 1915, should also apply to protons. ‘What we had anticipated we should find, we ended up finding,’ Sleator tells Chemistry World. ‘Our idea was correct.’