dxAce and Telamon are right.(five Gold Stars for y'all) That's the way
it works in my bathtub too.Ships going from America to Europe have to
steer a slightly Southerly direction (I think it's Southerly,South is
always best) to get to their port(s) of destination.
cuhulin

David wrote:

On Thu, 23 Mar 2006 12:07:08 -0500, dxAce
wrote:




Doesn't water going down a drain form a vortice that spins clockwise in the
northern hemisphere and counter-clockwise in the southern hemisphere?

Anticlockwise everywhere.

What ever you say, oh box canyon cloistered one.

dxAce
Michigan
USA

In article
,
Telamon wrote:

In article ,
dxAce wrote:

David wrote:

On 23 Mar 2006 07:24:17 -0800, "bpnjensen"
wrote:

The water will go down the toilet in the opposite direction. You'll
have to use your starter to turn off your car.

Not that this has anything to do with either magnetism or coriolis -
but NEITHER of these factors affects the way your water goes down the
drain. Watre is not magnetic, and coriolis acts on far too large a
scale to affect small-scale circulation. The shape of the basin and
any manual force one may exert on the fluid are virtually the only
things that determine whether the imparted rotation is clockwise or
counterclockwise. That's a fact.

Bruce Jensen

Not entirely true. If the basin is perfectly symmetrical and the
water is allowed to dampen out all vortices from the filling process
(i.e. allowed to rest for a day or two) the Coriolis Effect does make
it drain counterclockwise. It works the same way all over the globe.

Doesn't water going down a drain form a vortice that spins clockwise in the
northern hemisphere and counter-clockwise in the southern hemisphere?

You got that right Ace.
http://ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/(Gh)/guides/mtr/fw/crls.rxml

Oh yeah. At the equator no twist, the force is zero.

--
Telamon
Ventura, California

On Thu, 23 Mar 2006 15:00:16 -0500, dxAce
wrote:



David wrote:

On Thu, 23 Mar 2006 12:07:08 -0500, dxAce
wrote:




Doesn't water going down a drain form a vortice that spins clockwise in the
northern hemisphere and counter-clockwise in the southern hemisphere?

Anticlockwise everywhere.

What ever you say, oh box canyon cloistered one.

http://www.ems.psu.edu/~fraser/Bad/BadCoriolis.html

http://www.snopes.com/science/coriolis.htm#add

Not entirely true. If the basin is perfectly symmetrical and the
water is allowed to dampen out all vortices from the filling process
(i.e. allowed to rest for a day or two) the Coriolis Effect does make
it drain counterclockwise. It works the same way all over the globe.

You'd be hard pressed to find any usual basin made by the hand of man
with perfection enough to achieve what you describe.

There have been some scientifically controlled experiments along these
lines to see if it worked - not so much because the effect of the
Coriolis motion was in doubt, but because they wanted to see if they
could design an experiment precisely enough to do the job. They did -
but yes, it took several days, and a bunch of money - more than the
value of your typical toilet or kitchen sink.

I still stand by my original statement. In small basins of imperfect
design, it makes no significant difference at all. Coriolis is
typically appreciable only on large scales where the local effect of
the earth's rotation *relative to the scale of the motion of the fluid
being acted upon* is large - like mesoscale (~100 miles in breadth) and
larger. It also helps that air is far less massive than water.
Oceanic currents respond far more to sea floor- and continental-shape
than coriolis.

Bruce Jensen

No, it doesn't. The coriolis effect at the scale described by dxAce is
too small. This is one of those scientific myths that die REALLY hard.

Bruce Jensen

Oh yeah. At the equator no twist, the force is zero.
--
Telamon
Ventura, California

This is true, but again, only on large scale circulation - not on sinks
and toilets.

Bruce Jensen

Oh yeah. At the equator no twist, the force is zero.
--
Telamon
Ventura, California

This is true, but again, only on large scale circulation - not on sinks
and toilets.

Bruce Jensen

Anticlockwise everywhere.

What ever you say, oh box canyon cloistered one.

dxAce
Michigan
USA

No, the coriolis motion in the southern hemisphere *is* clockwise, as
opposed to that north of the equator. *Still* only for large scale
motion.

Bruce Jensen

This is a pull your leg thread. Get it?
--
Telamon
Ventura, California

Not until you told me! I know too many people who truly believe that
the earth's spin affects their homegrown whirlpools...the misconception
is common.

David seems utterly convinced, and has the s & n hemishere rotations
wrong to boot.

BJ