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

--
Telamon
Ventura, California

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

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

In article . com,
"bpnjensen" wrote:

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


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

The scale does is not a factor of the Coriolis force. The magnitude of
the force is constrained by latitude and speed of matter. It is a force
stemming from the inertia of mass having a rotational spin placed on it
by the motion of the earth so it affects all matter even the water in
your sink.

If you don't believe me then you can do this experiment yourself. Fill a
sink with water and after it is very still open the drain without
disturbing which way the water spins down the drain. Do it a couple of
times and you will notice a tendency for the water to spin clockwise.

--
Telamon
Ventura, California

The scale does is not a factor of the Coriolis force. The magnitude of
the force is constrained by latitude and speed of matter. It is a force

stemming from the inertia of mass having a rotational spin placed on it

by the motion of the earth so it affects all matter even the water in
your sink.

The scale does not affect the apparent "force" - but the Coriolis
effect is only significant with large scale circulation, mostly because
the larger scale allows the time necessary for the earth's spin to have
its apparent effect. For small containers under normal circumstances,
it is still mathematically insignificant.

If you don't believe me then you can do this experiment yourself. Fill a
sink with water and after it is very still open the drain without
disturbing which way the water spins down the drain. Do it a couple of
times and you will notice a tendency for the water to spin clockwise.

I have tried this. Unfortunately, I do not have a perfectly round
sink, nor was I able to get a perfectly still pool (we have enough
close truck traffic so that ripples can appear at most any time in a
basin of water). The results were inconclusive - but the results bore
on whether the system was perfect enough, not whether the Coriolis
effect is real (it is). Besides all that, if the Coriolis effect were
large, the rotation would show up fairly quickly even when the drain
remained closed. The fact that it requires both a perfectly still pool
and the added energy of a draining basin to make a showing says
something about its magnitude.

One interesting fact about it that nobody grabs onto is that in the N.
hemisphere, the Coriolis vector does not shift a wind to the left
(counterclockwise) but rather to the right (Clockwise). It is the
combination of the wind direction, its friction with the ground, the
locations of the high and low pressure areas, and the Coriolis vector
that determines rotation. Without the potential energy added to the
system by the pressure gradient, even at medium scales the Coriolis
vector would have a relatively small effect...and the effect would be
clockwise (!).

Bruce Jensen

On Thu, 23 Mar 2006 20:00:27 GMT, Telamon
wrote:

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.


H-Y-P-O-C-R-I-T-E ALERT!!

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