Mutiple mixture dishwasher tablets - are the active ingredients REALLY separated as it seems?

Factual Questions
1

I presume everyone here is familiar with these multiple section dishwasher tablet thingys (and there are similar things for clothes as well to my knowledge, and presumably for all sorts of other stuff) like e.g. the fairy platinum all in one tablet I just put in a dishwasher, which contained FOUR sections that were very very different to the touch (I am currently at my parent’s house for Xmas, I myself use only the cheapest of dishwasher tablets from the cash and carry ;))

I’ve not been able to find a great image of them (I suppose I can make a vid with my webcam if anyone cares?) but if you look at the dishwasher tablet in this image they are very similar indeed.

They are sold as being four in one and it’s very heavily implied that each section is one of the "in one"s - not sure what each thign is but presumably in theory it’s stuff like whatever 1 in 1 dishwasher tablets are (detergent?), salt, rinse aid, and some other thing. I have also used 5 in 1 tablets before btw. Anyhow if that was all the information I had, then I would just assume each section was a different chemical and that was that. But then I have used many other tablets which are uniform, or are say 3 in 1 with two obvious substances, or so on.

So are the various “sections” just marketing? There are two ways to interperet that question and I mean them both - firsty, could you just put all the substances together as a uniform mixture and have it work as well? (I am almost certain the answer to this is yes for the reason above) But also, secondly, and most interestingly - do the sections actually correspond to the “parts”? Or does one section contain all the active stuff in a uniform mix with the other three for decoration (or something along those lines)?

2

I tried one of those that I got as a sample. I live in a 60’s vintage home and I’ve never gotten around to remodeling the kitchen so I just have a counter top dishwasher. That makes it a lot easier to poke around inside.

As it happened, I had to open it up midway through a cycle and it did appear as if the little tripartite square was only partially dissolved. So I would conclude that no, it’s not just marketing and that whatever each substance is purported to do, it is in fact released separately, probably in response to some combination of factors such as pH, heat, etc.

3

One reason to separate the ingredients is that they may be antagonistic to one another – they may destroy each other’s cleaning ability. They may be able to coexist for minutes in the dishwasher but not for months on the shelf. This was a particular problem during the development of liquid dishwasher detergents, because powders kept the different chemicals in less intimate contact with each other.

However, that industry creates dumb products just to look different, too. That’s why they developed the liquids in the first place. Whether the package you describe needs to be the way it is involves more than a technical question.

4

Just wanted to add these things seemed to become popular after the EPA banned I think phosphates from dish detergents after people complained that the powders didn’t work like they used to, so whatever the way they work they do seem to do a better job now.