You've probably seen them many times: stretchy rubber bracelets, with a small credit-card style hologram attached. They seem to be everywhere. People in all walks of life are wearing them. What are they for?

Supposedly, wearing this rubber band around your wrist dramatically boosts your strength, balance, and flexibility. The secret is that there's a hologram stuck to it. Didn't know that holograms had that ability? Neither did we.

Here are the claims about what the rubber bands do and how they do it.

Your body has an energy field.

Power Balance has determined what the optimum frequency should be.

A hologram is printed on mylar and embedded with that frequency.

Bringing this hologram into your body's energy field will tune it to that same frequency.

This tuning of your energy field dramatically improves your balance, strength, and flexibility, by as much as five times.

Wow! Isn't that amazing? What's startling is that science was never able to discover this, and that this most astounding discovery in both medicine and physics was made by a couple of undereducated twenty-something surfers. Two brothers, Troy and Josh Rodarmel, founded Power Balance and claim to have made these staggering science-overturning discoveries simply because their family practiced alternative medicine. So far they've sold more than 2.5 million units, at $30-$60. Do the math.

Since their discoveries are so Earth-shattering, let's look at the various links in this chain that's sucking so much money out of gullible consumers:

Your body has an energy field.

Really? Well, it does if you watch Oprah or study Bullshido. Nobody has ever been able to detect such an energy field, and nobody has ever produced a description of what type of energy it might consist of, why it might exist, or what properties it might have.

Power Balance has determined what the optimum frequency should be.

It's pretty amazing to measure the “frequency” of an “energy field” that can't be detected or measured. If the Rodarmels have done this, they haven't yet said how, or described the field's properties. Tom O'Dowd, the Australian distributor, has said that this frequency is 7.83 Hertz. He didn't (entirely) just make that up. If you recognize this number, it's because it's one of the Schumann resonance frequencies. These are ELF resonances in the Earth's magnetic field, caused by lightning discharges. They have nothing to do with human biology, or strength or flexibility; yet for a long time, New Agers have latched onto this number as some sort of Mother Earth frequency, so it was a good choice for Power Balance to parrot. Which leads me to wonder: If Mother Earth already has this frequency surrounding and penetrating us, what the hell do we need the rubber band for?

A hologram is printed on mylar and embedded with that frequency.

Embedding a hologram with a “frequency” is meaningless technobabble. Every object has a resonant frequency, which means little more than the pitch of the sound it makes if you tap it. Imprinting a hologram onto it has no effect on this whatsoever. Moreover, 7.83 Hertz is an extremely low frequency, far below the audible threshold. An object that resonates at only 7.83 Hertz would have to be quite large — far larger than your average bass drum. A tiny piece of mylar is much too small to resonate at 7.83 Hertz.

Bringing this hologram into your body's energy field will tune it to that same frequency.

Again, meaningless technobabble. This is, in fact, so meaningless that I can't even think of anything to say about it.

This tuning of your energy field dramatically improves your balance, strength, and flexibility, by as much as five times.

Unless, of course, the salesman doesn't know whether you've already got it on or not. Watch the Power Balance salesman completely fail a blinded test on the Australian news show Today Tonight.

The demonstration they use to prove that it works is an old stage magician's trick called Applied Kinesiology. With a couple of very subtle tricks, the performer is able to fool the victim into thinking he has either more or less strength. Power Balance didn't even change the name of the trick, presumably guessing that people are too stupid to look it up on the Internet to see how it's done (unfortunately, they're right about this, all too often). Power Balance bracelets are sold just on the strength of this illusion. Watch a video of Australian skeptic Richard Saunders perform the trick in the exact same way the Power Balance salesmen do. Compare this to Power Balance's own sales video here.

By the way, if you're thinking about buying one of these rubber bands for $60, consider saving a lot of money. This blogger found that the Chinese manufacturer offers them at wholesale for $1.17. One friend of mine even contacted the manufacturer directly to have some novelty versions made and was able to get pricing at various volumes. At Power Balance volumes, he was told the price would be three cents.

That's a lot of magic and medical miracles for only three cents.

The funniest part? The Power Balance website has a “Report a Fake” link at the bottom.