In case you didn't know I will be on vacation next week. Costa Rica baby!!! I hope you are all jealous while you are sitting in your tiny cubicles, tiny offices, or open office environments. I, instead, will be swinging around the jungle canopy with the monkeys. Since I will be away I would like to leave you with something to think about and take with you throughout your life rather than just something you read once, laugh, and then go back to your interent porn.
Wow, what a segue. Speaking of interent porn, I got an email from my dad's friend the other day. The subject matter, surprisingly and unfortunately, was not interent porn. Instead, it was a quiz about everyday things that most people should know but don't. The questions included: "In which hand is the statue of liberty holding the torch?"; "What color stripe is at the top of the American flag?"; and "Which way does the water spin down the toilet?" I took exception to this last question because its status as an urban legend is well documented. There was even an episode of the Simpsons (Bart vs. Australia) when they go to Australia and the U.S. Embassy has a machine that makes sure the toilet flushes clockwise like back in the U.S.A.
Well let me give you the correct answer so you can tell anyone you run into what is actually going on. The truth lies with the French mathematician Gaspard-Gustave Colriolis (1792-1843) who discovered the phenomenom that bears his name: the Colriolis Effect. The truth is that if you imagine the Atlantic Ocean as a big toilet bowl, then yes, the water does spin clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and counterclockwise in the Southern Hemisphere. But on the scale of your American Standard toilet bowl, factors such as the geometry of the toilet; whether it is flat or tilted; and the direction in which water was initially added to it control which way the water drains. Sorry.
Armed with this new fact you can impress all of your friends at the bar with your knowledge of the world around you. Actually, you would probably get beaten up for knowing this so you should just keep it to yourself and have another beer. Mmmmm...beer.
P.S. The answers are right, red, clockwise.
1 comment:
but you were in Australia and the water in the toilet went straight down and didn't spin at all.
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