Talk:Magnetic stirrer

Early patents
Good to see acknowledgement given to the previously unkown inventor of the magnetic stirrer. McLaughlin never received any payment for his idea and it was patented by a Glasgow firm of lab equipment suppliers whose salesman had seen it in the lab in TEE.

The original bar magnets came from dismantled torpedo motors.

EDM 20 June 2005


 * OK, so the US guy got a patent on it first. Great minds think alike. The practical ability to coat a magnet in polythene was only widespread post-war. Besides, McLaughlin wasn't interested in protecting his intellectual property, but rather hoped the idea would spread: how wikipedian...
 * Ewen 15:35, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Spammy external links?
Is it appropriate to have these manufacturers in the External Links section? In particular, "the world's largest magnetic stirrers manufacturer" sounds kind of spammy. --Fastolfe00 01:23, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree - if the manufacturers were mentioned in the article, then putting them in external links would be OK I guess, but as it is, why not Corning or Fisher or other manufacturers? Wikipedia is not a web directory, so I would take them all out if there is no direct relevance to the article. Ruhrfisch 02:20, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't. The text actually talks about them. The manufacturer SBS were mentioned in the article as the inventor of the multipoint magnetic stirrer.Not the same with the other link to IKA company..... from my experiance the magnetic stirrer is only usfull if you utilise the lasic vibrations of popetrial motion while combing fusion gasses —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.8.85.132 (talk) 12:01, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Used for biological cultures?
I noticed that there are still companies making mechanical shakers whith an oscillating tabletop. What are their advantages over magnetic stirrers? I would guess that magnetic stirring is inherently "violent" and thus unsuitable for many kinds of biological cultures; is this right? All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 14:38, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Uninformative sentence
I deleted a sentence that said, basically "A 500 W unit is needed to heat 1000 ml of liquid." This information is useless if the desired temperature is not specified. A citable source would be nice, too. --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 21:08, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Citation Note
The referenced "Synthesis and Technique in Inorganic Chemistry" is mistitled on Google Books as "Physical Chemistry: a Molecular Approach". A request to correct this has been put in and may break the link at a later time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Anon423 (talk • contribs) 02:32, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Maximum 4 liters?
The sentence "The limited size of the bar means that magnetic stirrers can only be used for relatively small experiments, of 4 liters or less" is not proper to the actual technologies. We have units that can process up to 150L .... even the smallest magnetic stirrers from the big worldwide brands can process 10 or 20 L without any problem.