Science mags, question

Yo it's dumb, but I'll ask - so that adage that toilets flush the opposite on the other side of the equator, is that true?

And specifically...I'll be flying to Singapore and Diego Garcia here in the next couple days. Singapore's damn near on the equator, their lat/long isn't that high, and Diego is on the other side.

So, if I have my pilots tell me when we cross the equator, and I go flush the airplane lav...what will happen?

Will we enter a period of interdimensional flux?

Will temporal anomalies tear at the fabric of time and rupture our precious space/time continuum?

In all seriousness (and not star trek), what will happen?

heh. never been below the equator.

the Coriolis Effect does not have any impact on the direction of swirl on a toilet. Toilets, drains, etc. can swirl in either direction on either hemisphere.

Boring answer, I know.

Snopes knows all.

Airplane toilets don't really use enough water to swirl anyway...

I can honestly say I tried this experiment at the exact time I crossed the equator on a ship in the Indian Ocean. There wasn't a noticeable difference in the direction of the swirl but I did have a strong urge to wipe with the opposite hand.

Screw snopes; the Straight Dope knows all.
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_161.html

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Originally Posted by steve

Screw snopes; the Straight Dope knows all.

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Uh, Steve, they agree.

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Originally Posted by Jumper Bones

And specifically...I'll be flying to Singapore and Diego Garcia here in the next couple days.

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Don't know... but send me those Look/Rossi toepiece AFDs/spacers before you go!!!! :biggrin:

If it is flushing in the wrong direction, just reach in and splash it the other way. It will reverse.

If you turn the toilet upside down it will flush in the oposite direction.

The atmosphere is much more susceptible to Coriolis Effect, hence the rotation of storms(even thermals and dust devils are affected) differing in the N and S hemisphere, and the effect DOES apply to all fluids(air reacts like a fluid in many cases) but often there are other forces that counteract or override Coriolis, like local inertia, centripital, etc. The example in that story of the scientist waiting for the water to settle 24 hrs vs immediately flushing...pretty much means that barring any other influence, rotation will be affected by Coriolis as predicted.

This has me wondering about our lymphatic systems, and whether people behave differently when in different hemispheres.

Completely unscientific and a data point that could be affected by many variables but - On the Late Show, David Letterman called some guy at a convenience store in Australia and asked him to flush the toilet and tell him which way the water rotated. The guy said it went clockwise, just like on our side of the globe. This was probably 15 years ago or so...