Why water spins hemispheres

This sceptred isle. Root of all evil. Ethical conundrums. This sporting life. Stage and screen. Birds and the bees. Which way if any does it spin on the equator? Also are there any planets which don't spin? Kamski, Pune India The notion that water behaves differently in northern and southern hemisphere basins is a nice little earner for smart operators living on the equator. In reality, the direction in which the water goes down the plughole is determined by several factors, such as the shape of the basin, and the way the water is moving before the plug is removed, etc.

The position of the equator has no effect at all. There are manufacturers in equatorial countries who make basins in 3 shapes, one for north of the equator, one for south and one for right on the equator. The aforementioned smart operators buy these basins and set them up at appropriate places, and charge gullible tourists to watch the water going down the 3 plugholes in what they imagine to be a geographically-determined way.

The water does vortex in different directions north and south of the equator - dodgy wash basin manufacurers my eye! I've observed the phenomenon in my own hotel room, as I'm sure have millions of others. Luka Clarke, Lisbon Portugal I'm sorry, but its true. The coriolis effect has little to do with the direction of rotation. Not quite nothing, but sufficiently little to be completely ignored. For it to have a real effect you'll need to get your water to be sufficiently still, and your basin sufficiently symmetrical that the amazing 1 rotation in 24 hours of the Earth is the major factor, which is pretty difficult.

Iain Lambert, Slough The Coriolis effect does indeed influence the direction that water 'vortices' down a plughole - I have tried this several times during my time as a merchant seaman, at various latitudes North and South of the equator. The effect is stronger closer to the poles, at the equator the water can rotate in either direction, and on one occasion near the equator, appeared to go straight down the plughole without any rotation!! Ray Crabtree, Loddon UK As to your second question, I believe Mercury does not spin on its axis but maintains its position as it orbits the sun, leading to a permanent day side and a permanent night side as does our moon.

And to add to the other debate, I have seen the water rotate one way in a bath in Melbourne and the other way in my bath at home, both baths were pretty similar in structure! Rich Pollard, Leeds UK Rich is right that Mercury has a 'night' side and a 'day' side, but that is because it's day is about the same length as it's year. Our Moon behaves in the same way relative to the Earth. Other planets with unusual spins are Uranus, which spins about an axis virtually parallel to it's orbital plane; and Venus, which spins 'backwards' compared to the other planets.

What I want to know is, how did this happen, given that it presumably formed from the same gas cloud as the other planets. Leave water in the basin for about half an hour, gently lift the stopper vertically and watch the water go vortexlessly. Kenny Melvin, Monifieth Scotland I too was a merchant seaman, and used my clout as second engineer to conduct wide-ranging experiments into this phenomenon onboard several ships.

The results all proved that swirl direction was completely random, influenced more by bowl shape than anything else. Toilets, however, showed differing flush rates dependant on which Engineer was on duty, and how well he maintained Pneupress tank levels. Tim Hampson, Exeter UK The following was explained to me on a undergraduate mechanics course: If there are no other factors, such as irregular shape of the vessal or plug, or movement in the water then, as already stated by Iain Lambert, the coriolis effect will produce noticable results.

The water will spiral in different directions depending on your hemisphere I forget which. However this case can never occur in any bath because ofthe weakness of the coriolis force compared with the the other factors.

From personal experiment I know that one can actually change the direction of the vortex by swirling the water with your hand during the draining process. As regards vortexless draining, I am sceptical - I believe that the vortex arises because it is the most stable state for draining - any other state will decay into one of the vortex directions in the same way a ping pong ball balanced on a knife edge will fall one way or the other at the slightest perturbation.

I speculate that a vortex would still arise in pefectly still and symetrical conditions at the equator where the in absence of any prelevant force it would come frome the chaotic interaction of the air and water flows. This would make the direction effectively random. The Coriolis effect is much more noticable in long range ballistics where it must be included in any calculations. Its year is 89 Earth days and its day is 59 Earth days.

It was assumed by astronomers notably Schiapparelli that it would be tidally locked to the Sun as the Moon is to Earth but I remember in the 's how this was shown to be incorrect by radar. Later space probes confirmed this.

Richard F, Bristol UK If the coriolis effect made water drain in different directions in small sinks, can you imagine the effect it would have when playing snooker or pool?

The balls would curve in different directions depending on where you were playing. I can confirm that playing snooker in Australia is the same as playing in the UK; the balls don''t curve in different directions. THAT is scientific fact. Dave Green, Southwell UK How anyone could equate the susceptability to subtle forces of a snooker ball and a fluid is beyond me.

Who would object to a glass of water in their face over a snooker ball to the forehead, both projected at equal velocity? The pattern of water flow is undeniably consistant, in that it rotates counter-clockwise in the northern hemishpere, and opposite in the southern hemisphere. There is no mass conspiracy among the "Sink-builders Union", so why does this occur?

Perhaps the answer lies beyond "The Coriolis Effect", in magnetic forces we've yet to comprehend. If you put a piece of string around a globe at the equator and another around the world at Britain's latitude, the string will be longer at the equator. As the time taken for a spin of the earth is the same at both places, the speed of spin at the equator will be faster than further north and south. It's this difference that makes the north end of the plug-hole travel slower than the south end and the reverse in the southern hemisphere and the water spins down the plug-hole instead of dropping.

Is this the Coriolis Effect? I really don't know, but I saw Johnny Ball explain it on the telly, and I've got no reason to doubt his work. The effect clearly occurs - there was no subterfuge or sleight of hand. The convoluted explanation given related to the influence of the earth's magnetic field.

After all, the magnetic "equator" does not coincide with the physical equator, which it would need to do for the same effect to be demonstrated at all points on the physical equator. Arthur Threlfall Searson, Wickwar, England Although everyone thinks that water swirls different ways you can prove otherwise at home if you run your hot tap then once the basin is empty run the cold.

The water swirls in the direction the water is released from. Kirsty , Leeds, England Coriolis effect: this does have an effect on large masses over large distances the earth's atmosphere is affected - low pressure areas rotate in different directions in Northern and Southern Hemispheres.

But the clever people on the equator who 'prove' the opposite will actually turn in different directions when they demonstrate with the same bucket, thus giving the water a slight rotation in the direction which they want the water to go down the plughole - just watch very carefully next time!!

The coriolis effect has no effect over such short distances as in a bucket Mike Brookes, I read an article which disproved the whole idea of different spin depending on the hemisphere. While the Coriolis Effect exists, it only works for large bodies of air or water, such as continent-sized weather systems.

Collin Doyle, Winnipeg, Canada Obviously if you have a tap running this will have more of an affect than the Coriolis force. This question is about what happens when draining a sink if water.

In the absence of any overriding factors water does go down clockwise in the southern and anti-clockwise in the northern hemisphere. Anyone claiming that this is some kind of myth has failed to notice that no one has said that they own a sink whih regularly goes down the "wrong" way.

I like the explanation for how the bucket on the equator trick works. I wouldn't have thought it would actually work by moving a few meters as the effect of the Earth's spin is at its weakest at the equator. Simon, The northern hemisphere and southern hemisphere are both spinning in the same direction, the North and South are not spinning in opposite directions so water going down the plug whole is the same in either hemisphere.

Clash, Dunston, UK The earth is spinning counter-clockwise relative to the North Pole and clockwise relative to the South Pole, which causes the coriolis effect to be different on the Northern and Southern hemispheres. However, as a third year physics student I can assure you it has absolutely nothing to do with water spinning down the drain, even a very large drain.

It is, however, responsible for many weather effects such as hurricanes. Sam patera, Moorpark, U. I just "contradicted the laws of physics"! I filled the sink in my bathroom, pulled the plug, and observed the direction of rotation of the vortex. It was clockwise. I filled the sink again, pulled the plug, and immeidately gave the water a counterclockwise "swirl" with my hand. The swirling effect seemed to die out pretty quickly, but as water got to be very low in the sink a vortex formed, and it rotated counterclockwise.

Richard, USA No-one has mentioned numbers. For the Coriolis effect to make itself felt, the mobile medium air or water must travel thousands of Kms across the surface of the earth.

A plug hole is a couple of cms across. Not enough distance for the rotation of the earth to have any discernable effect at all. The water had been standing for about 15 minutes prior to me pulling the plug and was not obviously moving at all before I gently pulled the plug. I therefore must support the "random" argument. Paul Wright, Rochford UK Let's assume for the purpose of this argument that water goes one way in the north and appears to go the opposite way in the south.

IF this is true and I'm not saying it is, then it's not the water that changes direction but the angle of the viewer. In this argument the important factor is the relative position to the centre of the earth. A simple demonstration is to put an object in you hand holding it at waist level and start turning it clockwise, keep turning it in the same direction and raise it above head height, now your looking from the other side and it is turning the otherway even though it never stopped turning in the same direction.

Or try to imagine a vortex of water going from your plug hole at the north pole straight throught the centre of the earth to another plug hole at the south pole, the vortex only goes one way but the water seems to be going in different directions in the two holes as viewed by the observer. Ergo the water only ever goes one way north or south of the equator, it's the viewer who changes position relative to the vortex.

Well, here is my theory - You saw it here first! Electrons have two properties, spin and charge. Spin has recently been discovered and is implemented in the read head of computer hard drives. Spin makes it possible for plastic materials to be magnetised and conduct electricity. Since everything has electrons including water , and electrons are affected by magnetic fields Example - the earths magnetic field , it is my belief that spin holds the answer to the fundamentals of how gravity works and the answer to this age old question of direction of water spinning down a plughole could be answered.

As for the Coriolis Effect, this describes the conservation of momentum and explains why the water direction speeds up as the amount decreases. As for the basin shape, the tap last used, the way the plug was taken out - these all will factor in and any of these could dominate if allowed to. I propose a test for you crazy people out there.

This will prove if magnetisation is responsible for the direction! Coil the wire around the bucket at least times.

Connect the wire to a battery so current flows one way through. Wait 1 hour for the water to settle then drain the bucket. Refill the bucket, reverse the current direction and repeat the experiment. You will need to test both directions at least 5 times for a set of results worth considering.

Nick Hardman, Bury England Why are people still debating this issue? Does her mass change? Does her size change? Suppose excluding units for now , that the mass, size, and speed have these values:.

What happens to her speed? The product of all three quantities must remain at 48, so. What number could the speed be that would make the product of all three numbers equal to 48?

So the speed increased from 2 to 4. Notice that when the size was divided by 2 from 6 to 3 , the speed was multiplied by 2. If the size had been divided by 3, the speed would have been multiplied by 3.

In general, if the size decreases by some factor, the speed increases by that same factor. The opposite is also true: If the size increases by some factor, the speed decreases by that same factor. You can demonstrate the conservation of angular momentum with a simple gadget made from a ball—or any object—on a string and a small tube. This can be a short length of PVC pipe or any rigid tube you can find. Let the string attached to the ball pass through the tube see Figure 4.

Holding the tube and twirling it around, you can spin the ball around in a circle. Make sure the inside edges of the tube are not sharp; otherwise they will cut the string as it twirls around.

With your other hand, hold the string at the bottom to adjust the amount of string coming out the top. Start the ball twirling far away, and then pull down on the string to draw the ball closer. Notice how it speeds up. You can also demonstrate the conservation of angular momentum by spinning around in a swivel chair. See Figure 5. Use weights that are as heavy as you can hold. The more massive they are, the better this works.

Then someone starts the chair slowly spinning. While spinning, pull in the weights, and the speed increases. And naturally, the stylish couple picked out incredible outfits. For the occasion, Kyle donned a gorgeous, emerald-green.

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