Hey, this is fun. I got a good answer to my first question.
Now, I read on the ‘Big Fur Hat’ humor site a year ago that Vice Presiden Joe Biden once told school children water circles"backwards" down the drains of China.
–I take this to be a distortion of the unproven claim that water “more often” circles the drain “backwards” (counter-clockwise) in the SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE. Joe just changed the geography to self-centered East/West, with himself as Prime Meridian.
–DID BIDEN SAY THIS? I can’t find it online. Can you cite a source?
–Any comments on water circling the drain “backwards” in the Southern Hemisphere?
–In line with Biden’s alleged remark: My grandmother, born in 1884, once told me that the Chinese were different from us because, being born on the other side of the world, “Their noses run and their feet smell.”
Water circling the drain due to hemisphere is a myth. The shape of the basin and the means of water entering the basin play a much larger role than any coriolis effect. If you let the water sit in the basin for a day or two and let all motion from pouring the water in settle out, then unplug the drain cleanly and smoothly without disturbing the flow, then coriolis might affect the water enough to create a spiral. Assuming the outlet doesn’t overwhelm it.
Coriolis works on large distance scales, like hurricanes, not small scales, like bathtubs and toilets.
I have no idea about Biden or comments about China.
Last evening on TV I say a picture of a flood caused by the earthquake in New Zealand and the floodwater flowing into a man hole was spiraling counterclockwise.