Why do wrist watches stop working for some people?

Factual Questions
41

What medical test would measure your personal amount of “electrical current”?

As an aside I deal with lots of dead watches as an amateur. IMO 90% of all watch issues are due to using batteries that have aged out. A lot of people don’t realize that watch batteries do not have infinite storage lifetimes. Manufacturers tend to buy lots of batteries at once and some sit around for quite some time. The batteries that get put in new watches may measure OK at installation, but if they are long in the tooth and on the back end of their lifetime bell curve they will not last nearly as long as a fresh battery. In some cases you may only get a few weeks or a month out a battery when buying the watch new.

Look at it this way, if a battery will last 3 years or so in storage - it sits around after being manufactured for some time before being shipped to the manufacturer, then it may be a year before the manufacturer uses it, then the watch will be shipped and may sit in inventory for months to years before being sold. By the time you get a watch the battery might be on it’s last legs. It’s not uncommon.

42

I trust there are multiple explanations.

One of them might be that a watch labeled “Water Resistant” is not water resistant. If it says, “30 m”, that means it’s resistant to 30 meters static pressure, which never happens in the real world. You can allegedly splash water on “30 m”, but you can’t go swimming.

I take care to buy watches that are rated to 50m or more. Those are suppose to work while swimming, which allowing for error might allow you to splash water on them. They will not work for diving. Neither will a 100m water resistant watch. Details are here and in the fine print of your watch instructions. Work this out before you purchase the watch.

Note that new watches, old watches, cheap watches, expensive watches, battery operated watches and wind-up watches can all be “Water Resistant” that is to say not waterproof at all.

Admittedly, I’ve had uneven luck with replacing watch batteries. Sometimes (ok once that I can document) it was due to a scammer. Some watches have a 10 year warranty (again, read the fine print). This one has an embedded solar cell, so it will last forever, or so I claim to credulously believe (others may look here).

43

I just found this board while searching this type of question, and, yes, my experience could be biased, since I’m me and I haven’t found anyone that is like me so we can compare notes. My family has noticed it though, as when I was a kid, the parents had to buy the watch batteries. I figure not every single watch battery could be that old and that frail and once replaced, the watches would run for a while again, so they weren’t broken. I kill watches off and on. Got so bad when I was in my late teens that I started wearing a pocket watch. No wristwatch would live. I have a drawer full of watches, which will run if I put new batteries in them, but then die. They are not broken, they just won’t keep running for me.

I also interfere with radios and tv antenna signals. GPS devices, the kind with pointing arrows, reverse direction when I hold them, as verified by every one else in the group. Tried several times, but was then not allowed to touch it again.

I finally found a watch that lives. It stops every once in a while, but then starts again, which happened last night. Had the watch checked out by a watch repairman and there is nothing wrong with it and the battery was good, but I have them replace it anyways. I have to stay away from my clock radio, any clock radio, as I’ve tried many brands, if I want to avoid static. The watch I have that has lived is a Swiss Army made from titanium. My skin does not eat it, as it eats metal or plating of most anything and discolors my skin. No one can tell me why, though I did have a doctor, an MD, tell me that my magnesium level was high. So, perhaps try and give them a titanium watch to see if it makes any difference.

I do not, however, seem to affect computers, as they are my job. Stuff magically starts working again when I touch it, but I believe that has more to do with user error than anything. I also electrocute people throughout the year, not just in the dry part of the year. I’ve tried to find a pattern of eating or activity, but haven’t found anything so far. I have a pretty consistent schedule. I would love to have a nice peer reviewable study done. I think it would be quite interesting.

44

Would static electricity caused by wearing man made materials that rub up against each other, have any affect?

Also I’ve noticed that its not that uncommon for people with "wind up "wristwatches, to wind them up while its still on their wrist, which apparently bends the spindle or somesuch.

45

I have very simular problem as did my grandmother and other family members! But I kill watches dead within an hour or 2! I seem to be a walking magnet! The problem is static related. One day I got shocked so many times that we started counting, I stopped after I hit 100 times! I have an unusually high static levels due to unusually high levels of copper in my body. I have a lovely disease called wilson’s were I don’t get rid of excess copper normally. When I found this out I started taking higher then normal levels of calcium magnesium and zinc. Now my static levels are much lower. But I still effect the computer, radio waves and TV! The only plus side to this is if I break a bone it heals much faster then normal. If liver problems run in your family, you might get checked for wilson’s too. I think it can be high levels of many metals that does this but not sure.

46

Whoa…double zombie!

47

I wonder if the Dunning-Kruger effect plays a part here: the klutziest people are also those least qualified to evaluate their klutziness. It seems like there are probably two groups of people that break watches: klutzes who know it and aren’t surprised when their watches break, and those that don’t know it and blame it on wooish factors.

48

Well, I had always counted myself among those who just inexplicably “kills” watches. I gave up wearing them ages ago. This, however, is more likely since I just run into stuff like doorframes all the time. Klutz.

49

I think it’s interesting that the people who are saying that it’s just normal for watches or watch batteries to be faulty are ignoring the fact that there have been several people who pointed out the fact that there are people who have stopped watches and then when those same watches were given to other people, the watches started working again. If the watches were able to work again for someone else, then there’s no way that it was the watch that caused the problem.

I’m a teacher and I often have my students use hand held devices to answer questions. Today one of my students’ remote started having all kinds of weird problems. I didn’t think much of it at first, until I had him try at least 5 other remotes and all of them had the same issues for him. The remotes he used included remotes that his classmates had just used successfully and a few of them were tried by other people right afterwards and worked fine. In that one students’ hands multiple of these devices had the same bizarre problems that no one else experienced.

I’d looked this stuff up before because I had a boyfriend once who’d been one of those people who would stop watches (and for him, sometimes they’d even start running backwards, which also seems like more than just normal poor craftmanship). His skin would also eat away at metal, so if he had been able to successfully wear a watch, he’d have eventually burned a hole through the back of it. I’ve always thought that his issue was chemical, because his skin would irritate my skin. Someone else said that they thought this was related to having died previously, which fits for him because he was pronounced dead at birth and then had his heart stop again in his 20s. We’ve always joked that he was a zombie, but I was hoping to get a better explanation for my student. The poor kid’s classmates were already calling him a witch.

50

Hemochromatosis (too much iron in a persons system) can cause a watch to stop. the iron collects in the carpals and the constant movement causes it to magnetize. Problem solved. I have this condition. I can only wear a watch a couple days and when I take it off it starts running after a couple days. when i have blood drained every week for several weeks, viola! I can wear a watch again.

51

Off-topic 1: Now it’s a triple zombie

Off-topic 2: It’s VOILA not VIOLA

On-topic: I stopped many, many watches of the type you have to wind. Some were expensive, some were cheap, but they all stopped if I was wearing them, and ran fine if I left them sitting on my dresser. I took them to jewelers who found nothing wrong, cleaned them, and gave them back. They would run fine for months on my dresser as long as I kept them wound, and stop within a couple of hours of my putting them on, except in the case of Timex watches, which would go for about a week.

Digital watches were a little better, except that I had one that, while I was wearing it, would lose about a minute per hour, and it would not lose a minute per hour when it was sitting on my dresser. It was kind of an expensive watch, too.

Then I found a cheap Casio, which, while it uses the same kind of batteries as the expensive digital watch, seems to keep the correct time whether I’m wearing it or not. So I have been wearing this watch since 1993. (Well, actually I am on the third one now, because things other than the timekeeping function DO wear out, for instance for awhile I had one set to daylight savings and another set to standard time, because the little things you use to set the time had broken).

It is really hard to call it “confirmation bias” when every single watch you wear, for years and years of your life, goes dead. When those watches include expensive watches that were family heirlooms and Mickey Mouse watches you picked up in a pawnshop and all those Timexes, which had a guarantee and so got traded in for new Timexes over and over again. You honestly do begin to think maybe the problem is not the watches.

52

Sorry, but you cannot over wind a watch with your fingers. My father has been a highly regarded licensed watchmaker since 1949. What happens is: 1) the watch stops 2) the owner assumes the watch needs winding 3) the owner winds the watch, but it doesn’t start 4) the watch owner believes the old “over wound” myth.

What actually happens is that the watch stopped for a mechanical reason. It could be a mainspring that is already broken, or worn moving parts, or dirt in the watch movement, or old dirty and gummy oil that needs to be cleaned. A watch movement is cleaned by dis-assembling, cleaning parts separately, re-assembling, adjusting, and re-lubricating. Sometimes parts are worn or broken and need to be replaced.

I’m repeating myself here, but:
The POINT is, the last thing the watch owner did was wind the watch. They wound it because it had ALREADY STOPPED. They believe the myth that they over wound the watch. Mechanical watches run best when fully wound every day.

53

If you can do this in a truly repeatable way–such as naming a specific brand of digital watch, showing that it works correctly without being on your wrist and then showing (under controlled conditions) that it runs slow while being on your wrist–then you have a very good shot at winning a million dollars from the JREF. No known physical process that the human body can control could have that kind of effect, and therefore would fall under their definition of paranormal.

54

The only watches I’ve ever had that lasted any decent amount of time are those that never needed any maintenance in the form of winding or replacement of batteries - I’ve currently got a Citizen Eco-Drive (solar powered) that has given me several years of very faithful service - replacing a similar one that still works, but was physically damaged beyond repair. Before that, I had a Seiko self-winder which was great - I replaced it because - again, it was scratched and broken.

Before that, I must have had dozens of quartz digital and analogue watches, and a few mechanical ones - the mechanical ones were never very good anyway - and the digital ones always failed a short while after being opened to replace the battery. I don’t claim any magical powers - I think people just overestimate the durability and longevity of watches in general - and when they break, they go looking for a reason that makes them feel special.

This winter, when I was walking to the train station in the dark, I also noticed eight separate street lights that seemed to switch off (or sometimes, they were off and switched on) as I approached. I reported them to the council and they came and replaced the bulbs, and phenomenon mysteriously stopped.

The notion that ailments causing slightly elevated levels of this or that in the blood might interfere with the function of a watch has got to be bullshit - no matter what disease you have, your body isn’t accumulating anything like the amount of metal in actual metal objects around the home, or you’d be dead. There’s metal all around us - if the iron in your blood messes up your watch, how does it not also get messed up if you place it on top of the fridge?

55

Until I moved off the family farm, I could not keep a functioning watch.

I now attribute my watch problems to magnetic cows.

56

I’m klutzy and I know it.

Yes, magnetic cows are a common problem. But at least you can always find north when they are around.

57

Some people who are very sedentary (often the elderly) will have problems with automatic watches, as they wind themselves based on the movement of your arm.

58

Forget a month! For years, I’ve not been able to wear a watch with any success, because a watch placed on my wrist will lose 10 minutes in less than 12 hours. I used to blame the jewelers, thinking they had cheated me by giving me old batteries. It never occurred to me that there could be something wrong with me. But, when I pulled the batteries myself, making sure of the expiration date and had batteries replaced in 9, yes, 9 watches, and tried wearing each one with no success, I just gave up.

Case in point: I put the watch on at 7AM one morning (brand new battery) and by 6:30PM that night, it was running 10 min. slow. Disgusted, I took the watch off and threw it into my softball bag. Next week, I pulled it out, and it was running perfectly - 10 min. slow. I put it on again, hoping it was just a fluke - you can’t blame someone for trying! Once again, by evening it was running slow.

Someone thought it might be the pH level in my skin??? I’ve seen a few suggestions on this forum - placing something between my wrist and the watch, or using an automatic watch - which I am hoping to try. I’m getting sick of pulling my cell phone out for the time. Thank you for the suggestions.

Incidentally, I actually have about 15 watches: some were given to me, but the majority were purchased by my then set aside because of this problem. I would have the battery replaced then, when that didn’t work, I would just buy a new watch, thinking, of course, that I had just made a bad choice and there was something wrong with the watch. I should start selling on eBay!

59

No! A quad!!

60

zombie or no

takes a licking and keeps on ticking (the thread but maybe not the watch).