7 June 2015

The Greatest Geek Experiment Ever

Posted by Dan Satterfield

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Click image to see the answer to one of the great questions of backyard science!

Will toilets in different hemispheres drain in opposite directions? This has long been a great trivia question and the usual answer is that the radius of rotation is too small to detect any difference. This basically true, because the rotation you see mainly depends on how the toilet is constructed. However, if you control for everything, can you detect the coriolis force in the way a child’s kiddie pool drains??

The folks at Veritasium and Smarter Every Day have done the ultimate geek experiment, and answered the question! Click the image above and find out the answer! (Meteorologists will be talking about this for years, and I know of a similar experiment using a wider pool a few years ago, but this is super cool.)

More video explanations of the coriolis effect HERE and below: