The tourists preferred the fantasy to the reality. Fraser proceeds to explain how you can fake it yourself. According to various sources , it is possible to demonstrate a Coriolis effect on water on a small scale, but only under extremely controlled circumstances -- involving predictably shaped water vessels, long periods of time of waiting for water to become as still as possible, carefully removing a stopper in the bottom of the vessel without adding spin, and other such crazy stuff.
But in your typical toilet or sink, the Coriolis force is so small as to be undetectable relative to other forces. Even holding a bowl of water and turning around introduces sufficient spin to get things going in one direction or another. Go to your bathroom now and observe water going down the drain -- any drain you want. Depending on the efficiency of your plumbing, you may need to stop up the drain, fill the basin, then unplug it and wait. It might also help to have something lightweight floating in there, to mark any motion -- a few bits of tissue may work, or a matchstick or two.
Observe whether the draining water forms a clockwise or counter-clockwise spiral. Go ahead, I'll wait. Now check all the other drains you can find. Do they match? In my admittedly unscientific testing just now, one sink drained clockwise, the other counter-clockwise, one didn't have an easily observable spin it's small , and the toilet was also counter-clockwise, clearly due to the position of its water jets.
There you go: science in action. Via Steven Frank , via Snopes. Note that we covered this topic back in as well. Popular Latest. The Atlantic Crossword. Sign In Subscribe.
The Simpsons episode " Bart vs. Australia ," which involves the oldest Simpson kid getting indicted for fraud in the Commonwealth, starts with a scene in a bathroom. Bart has noticed that the water in the sink always drains in a counterclockwise way; Lisa informs him that, in the Southern Hemisphere, it drains the other way. Bart doesn't believe her. To find out for sure, though, he calls a number in Australia—collect—and … hijinks ensure.
The idea that water rotates differently in the different hemispheres is a long-standing one. Long before seeing that Simpsons episode, I'd heard it, and assumed it to be true. It sounds true. When Shapiro first unplugged a drain at the bottom of the dish, he didn't notice any rotation to the water as it drained. However, after some time the water eventually began to swirl counterclockwise, though at a slow rate.
A few years later, another research team at the University of Sydney showed the opposite to be true in the Southern Hemisphere. But when it comes to which direction flushed toilet water drains, only one thing matters do your flush jets point to the left or the right?
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