Toilets flushing the wrong way Current Spam Crisis

Dear list

The one thing that annoys me more than spam is bad science so let's put this
one to bed once and for all.........the question of toilets flushing
backwards in Australia that is.

The following is paraphrased from "Bad Astronomy" by Philip Plait CT2 pp
21-27 a truly excellent read which will help you to remove a lot of the guff
stored in your brains concerning conspiracy theories old wives tales etc.

Basically it goes something like this. The Coriolis effect concerns the
decreasing eastwards velocity of anything on the earths surface as you move
from the equator to the poles. At the equator you would be moving easterly
at 1670kmh (that's kilometres per hour for you guys still living in the
past). At Sarasota Florida (27 deg North) you would be going at 1500 kph At
Barrow Alaska you would be going at 550kph and finally at the north pole you
aren't moving east at all merely twirling round and round.

Now image you are standing in Sarasota and your mate is standing on the
equator with a cricket ball in his hand (the original text says baseball
which we all know is a game called rounders which is played by girls in the
UK). If you mate now throws you the ball it will have a velocity towards
you and one to the side in the easterly direction. As the ball comes
towards you therefore it moves in an eastward direction because you are
moving less quickly in that direction and unless your thrower has
compensated for this effect then the ball will miss you by a long way. This
effect has been known since the 1800's and was first written up by a French
mathematician called....you've guessed it Coriolis.

The effect is responsible for the clockwise and anticlockwise rotation of
low pressure weather systems in the southern and northern hemispheres.
This brings us to the nub of the whole matter. People know this to be the
case (the weather system bit) but they then do the following.

"Ahhhhh well my toilet flushing or my sink/bath emptying looks like a
whirlwind or weather system...and I know that these systems spin opposite
ways in either hemisphere so eureka my toilet/bath/sink empties the other
way...."

What a load of poppycock, for this to be the case i.e.. for the flow to spin
in opposite directions then you would have to have a plug hole/pipe the size
of a small country. Anyway there you go that's my bit badly paraphrased if
you need any more info buy the book.

Also toilets are specially designed to swirl the water it help remove
ahemmmmmm shall we say...."deposits" and they have specially designed angled
water courses to do this.

So there you go if I read any more poop like this on the RPML I will be
coming round to sort you out :-)

As for the spam I haven't got a clue

Best Regards

Chris

Dr. Chris Sutcliffe

Rapid, Micro and Bio Manufacturing Research
MSERC
The University of Liverpool
Department of Engineering
Ashton Building
Brownlow Hill
Liverpool
L69 3GL

Tel. +44 (0)151 794 4316
Fax. +44 (0)151 794 4703
Mobile (0151) 794 7729

Secretary, Linda: +44 (0)151 794 4705
Email c.j.sutcliffe@liv.ac.uk
URL http://mserc.liv.ac.uk/

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-rp-ml@rapid.lpt.fi [mailto:owner-rp-ml@rapid.lpt.fi]On
Behalf Of John M. Irvin
Sent: 06 February 2004 18:42
To: David K. Leigh; rp-ml@rapid.lpt.fi
Subject: RE: Current Spam Crisis

David
I know that the toilets flush backwards in Australia backwards (Coriolis
Effect). That is why the pee mostly on flat walls, The American standard
toilets don't work down under. But my question is if the toilets flush
backwards down under then where does it not rotate forward or backward. On
the equator they cannot get a toilet to go backwards or forwards so is this
why there is only 3rd world countries on the equator because they cannot get
rid of all the poop.
John Irvin, NECO Inc.
Received on Sat Feb 07 15:27:00 2004