When a male normally urinates, the stream is usually steady,narrow and straight. What would cause the initial stream to become a spray bending toward the right and than becoming a normal stream? This situation seems to have nothing to do with the existence/lack of an erection.
The bend is caused by penis gnomes. They just love to splash peepee on the floor.
If I’m not mistaken, post ejaculatory urine can come out in a variety of forms ranging from single-to-split-to-spray stream urine which eventually hits the ground and reeks up your whole bathroom.
If I remember correctly from my urology rotation days, parts of the urethra near the tip are adhered shut, so you don’t have a wide open, straight tube. The force of urine generally quickly opens it, and things fly straighter. Most common after intercourse, or ejaculation, in the average male.
insider, your question makes you an official member of the stream team!
This is indeed a worthy topic.
I remember reading that Niels Bohr (Founding Father of Quantum Mechanics, Nobel laureate in physics etc)was greatly intrigued by the shape of the fluid stream, especially how the cross-section of a well formed stream seems to oscillate in shape between various elliptical outlines, allong the length of the stream. I distinctly remember reading that the young Niels observed this phenomenon a late Saturday night at some local festival or such. Supposedly this set him thinking along the lines that made him write a brilliant paper on fluid dynamics.
Carlsberg (one of the main Danish breweries) contributed greatly to science, and they still do. I believe that the current Niels Bohr institute is housed in a building that used to belong to the brewery…
(My latest attempts with google to corroborate this story yielding nothing, so maybe it’s nothing but a good story.)
tc, your story is correct. Bohr did fundamental work on oscillating jets of fluid. Essentially, the surface tension and the inertia of the fluid work against each other, so that the cross section of an initially elliptical jet will oscillate along its length.
A fellow grad student wrote her doctoral dissertation on a minor extension of Bohr’s work. The phenomenon is of interest to engineers because if the density of the fluid is known, the surface tension can be measured to a high degree of accuracy by observing the oscillations of a jet of the fluid issuing from an elliptical orifice, such as your pee-hole. Our research adviser published several well-received articles in the Journal of Applied Mechanics a few years ago.
Truth is stranger than fiction sometimes, innit?
Well, I have a similar problem. At low flow rates, my urine stream goes wide left, like a foul ball hit by a right-handed 3-and-2 batter trying to stay alive at the plate. When I was a lad, I was always being scolded by my clean-freak mom for sprinkling on the edge of the bowl. It wasn’t my fault - it’s the way I’m built.
(Damn, but I never imagined I’d ever be discussing these details with anyone - but hey, this is an anonymous forum.)
I’m no student of Neils Bohr, but - having an analytical mind - I’ve always chalked this up to the detailed “topography” of the end of my urethra. It’s not grossly deformed or anything, but the left edge of the slit has a spot that doesn’t precisely meet up with the right edge, so when it’s not being forced open by a heavy flow, it sort of naturally points to the left.
So tell me when I cross the TMI line. Oh. Sorry. Didn’t see it.
Anyway, I learned to deal with it when urinating by pinching off the flow with my fingers until I build up enough pressure so that when I let go, the flow immediately starts off hard and fast.
So - examine your urethra closely, insider, and if the “lips” don’t exactly meet up, then that’s your problem. Learn to deal with it. But don’t do what I did and keep pinching when airplane turbulence causes the toilet lid to drop and then bend over to lift the lid again, putting pressure on your bladder while you experience positive gees. Watching blood flow from your urethra is a very disturbing experience.
D’oh! Make that a left-handed batter. It’s late.
Sit down. Don’t stare.
Hey bughunter! Weren’t you in my class at school? You’re sort of average height, sandy darkish hair, right?
Wow - fancy reading all this about YOU!
Redboss. (I’ve got black curly hair, and I’m short and wear glasses. Remember me?)
We used to call you “Old Sprinkle-toes” Remember?