....do they not flush at all near the equator?
If toilets flush backwards in the southern hemisphere...
May 3, 2002, 4:11 PM ET18 posts by 11 posters
18 posts
'Guess they drop straight down at the eq ;)
"Mark Chmura's Left Testicle" wrote in message news:yaCA8.3432$[email]...
That is a myth.
"Mark Chmura's Left Testicle" wrote in message news:yaCA8.3432$[email]...
"Mark Chmura's Left Testicle" wrote in message news:yaCA8.3432$[email]...
toilets don't flush backwards in the southern hemisphere.
And even if this effect did happen, it would be to sinks or bathtubs full of water, not toilets, which jet the water into the bowl in a certain direction.....
But it doesn't even happen to sinks or bathtubs, you have to get something really large, like a hurricane, to see this effect. Hurricanes DO go opposite directions in the northern and southern hemisphere.
But water swirling from sinks, baths, and toilet bowls, is fairly random, if you test 30 different sinks, you'll get a mix of the two possible results (clockwise and counterclockwise).
I recommend www.badastronomy.com or various other webpages that detail the science behind this.
A good thing to observe when someone makes this claim, is to then say, "well, which way DO they go in our hemisphere? Clockwise or counterclockwise?" They can almost never tell you. All they know is that it supposedly goes "opposite" in the other hemisphere.
...and WHAT is a hemisphere?
(BTW, I'm just kidding...yes, most Americans are ignorant, but not all of us)
"Algomeysa" wrote in message news:ab02s4$cqn$[email]...
of
if
that
"Dawn C." wrote in message news:hzSA8.48655$[email]...
What's the one SIMPSONS, where Homer keeps asking the person to define words in the sentence, and finally gets down to "is." ?
"Algomeysa" wrote in message news:ab10qd$t7$[email]...
of
words
are you thinking of "if" from 1F19 The Boy Who Knew Too Much where Bart witnesses Freddy Quimby's fiasco with the French guy? Homer asks Skinner what "deadlocked" means, then "sequestered," then "if" (a conjuction meaning "in event that" or "on condition that"). so *if* the jury is *deadlocked,* we'll be *sequestered* in ... it's something like that ...
"P. Piggly Hogswine" wrote in message news:jRTA8.6312$[email]...
meaning
*deadlocked,*
That's the one, thank you!
When he was a juror in "The Boy Who Knew Too Much" 1F19
"Algomeysa" wrote in message news:ab02s4$cqn$[email]...
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if
that
well, i'll be jiggered! even though a sink is not a large enough environment to witness the coriolis force, i always thought that in *extremely controlled* experiments (eliminating such factors as influential sink design, rotation of water based on how it was poured (and just cause it looks "still" doesn't mean it's not rotating), etc). it could be seen to produce clockwise rotation in the southern hemisphere and counter-clockwise in the northern (there are notes to articles in Nature with research from the 1960s). see http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~dvandom/Edu/newcor.html section 5.2. Water Going The Wrong Way Down The Sink (about 2/3 the way down the page) and the notes at the end of the page.
"P. Piggly Hogswine" wrote in message news:OFSA8.6193$[email]...
influential
it
counter-clockwise
I have read somewhere that, if a sink was filled with water but then undisturbed for a few days, and the Brownian motion from the water poured into the sink subsided as the water settled, then you might get the desired hemisphere-specific effect (assuming a sink with no unperfections, a plug not pulled out in such a way that disturbed the water, etc etc).
But the point is, in just casual use, fill a sink with water, then watch it drain, it's not going to happen.
Furthermore, somehow this idea has mutated from sink or bathtub to toilet, which is a different thing altogether, with "forced swirling" going on, due to the way the water is jetted into the bowl.
Still, the concept in the SIMPSONS episode where the American embassy in Australia has a device in their toilets to force water to swirl the "right way" to correct homesickness for flushers was inspired.
In one of those Michael Palin travelogues, he gets taken in by this idea completely, when someone right on the equator shows him, 10 feet this way, the water going one way, then 10 feet that way, the other going the other way. It's a con, but one that Palin and crew fall for completely (and I do n't blame him, because apparently there are still high school teachers who teach this in physics class, convinced that it's true).
"Algomeysa" wrote in message news:ab11du$97$[email]...
cause
from
page)
desired
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due
do
yeah, i think we're agreeing on the main point - in everday scenarios the corilois effect is not being witnessed in sinks and tubs (the geometry of the container, motion introduced by the pouring, the symmetry or asymmetry of the drain mechanism, etc is creating the rotation - whatever direction that may be if any) and especially not in toilets (i personally can't believe people buy this one), and although i've never seen it first hand, i'm inclined to believe the stuff i've also read that under the right circumstances (which are most likely in a laboratory with the right equipment (and not introducing swirling by pulling the drain plug like you mentioned)) the coriolis force *can* be witnessed as water swirling in a specific direction in a specific hemisphere, but this is completely different from the coriolis effect *causing* swirling in everyday plumbing.
that's like saying this rock [holds up rock] keeps tigers away ... :)
Lisa, I'd like to buy your rock.
Austin
$5 bear tax! This is the biggest tax hike in history!
"Let the bears pay the Bear tax. I pay the Homer Tax!"
"thats the Home Owner Tax!"
"Mogo8918" wrote in message news:[email]...
"We're here! We're queer! We don't want anymore bears!
"Three wars back we called saurkraut Liberty Cabbage, and we called Liberty Cabbage Super Slaw! Back then a suitcase was known as a Swedish Luchbox. Anyway; long story short, is a phrase whose origing are complicated and rambling." Abraham Simpson
P. Piggly Hogswine wrote:
That's specious reasoning, P. Piggly.
Um, technically it's about as much a force as inertia...
And this is looking like a Radioactive Man comic I read, when Radioactive Man goes through a portal-potty to another dimension where everyone looks like him and acts really anal retentive about technical details.