Do toilets really flow the opposite way in Australia then in the U.S.?

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Paul W

The answer is yes as i have travelled australia for a year and i wanted to know this too.

Penny

Yes, and they are not half full of water either.

yes, and not only australia, but everywhere below the equator

einreb

no its a myth

eco_paula

I just got back from Brisbance, Australia and yes they do.

wai99

It is a matter of perception. Clockwise for us is counterclockwise to them because the U.S. and Australia are on opposite ends of the globe. If a person from the U.S. and Australia both point "up", they are actually pointing in opposite directions.

aflumpire

in australia its more a flush down then a spinning flush. But yes if anything it would spin the other way as we are in the southern hemisphere and u guys are in the north!

idontlike_idiots

we don't have then new-fangled toilets that flush here in Aussie we just use a hole in the back-yard

Tojo

Yep they flush in the oppiste direction in the Southern Hemisphere & on the equator it goes straight down with no twirl. I have tested it.

Barkley Hound

Toilets are designed to have the water swirl in a specific direction. The same toilet will flow the same way.

Some people suggest that the reason toilets, sinks and other types of drains swirl in the direction they do as the water drains out is due to the Coriolis Effect, also known less pedantically as the "Coriolis Force".

Well, sort of, in a way, but...

Into each "drain event" there are a whole lot of different factors that determine which way the water in a drain is going to spin, among them:

* The shape of the drain, and the basin the water is in
* Whether it is level or tilted
* Which direction the water is moving in when you open the drain

So in an idealized toilet experiment (Using the ideal toilet of Plato's True World?), with perfectly still water to begin with, a prefectly round and level drain, and a means of opening the drain that didn't horizontally disturb the water, The Coriolis Effect just might casue the water to swirl clockwise in the southern hemisphere, and counterclockwise in the northern. But any of the other factors might overwhen the Effect and cause the water to swirl the other way.

~natural~

Pacman187

yes

abfabmom1

Yes.

All whirlpools flow counter-clockwise north of the equator, and clockwise south of the equator.

arkguy20

The direction a toilet flush flows depends on the toilet, regardless of whether it's in the U.S. or anywhere else.

Mark

I think you wanted to use "than", not "then".

god knows and sees else Yahoo

dlobryan1

No, this is just a popular myth that has become an urban legend.

This is what I found on livescience.com.

Water drains backwards in the Southern Hemisphere due to the Earth's rotation?

Not only is the Earth's rotation too weak to affect the direction of water flowing in a drain, tests you can easily perform in a few washrooms will show that water whirlpools both ways depending on the sink's structure, not the hemisphere.

I had heard that for years, but it's not true.

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