…even the ones that don’t have weights or magnets?
Possible differences from the days of yore:
Or maybe something else.
But it seems as a kid, this was a great and simple demonstration of the Bernoulli effect.
But no more.
What gives?
The Master says it’s not the Bernoulli Effect, anyway. Well, eventually he does, there’s a lot of waffling first.
I’d guess it’s mostly your guess of lower-flow showers combined with stiffer/heavier curtains (plastic instead of cotton), but the trend toward larger showers can’t be helping, either.
And this assumes that the noted effect is even real: I’m assuming you haven’t studied a large number of shower curtains either now or then, so it could just be sampling variance.
Global warming.
well yeah of course, but what is the mechanism? No doubt the answer runs right through “Obama’s fault”, but how?
All my shower curtains have built in magnets that hold it to the steel tub. Of course, I’m old school. You people must have fiberglass tubs.
Just the other day I was wondering the same thing myself. I suspect it is the decreased pressure that shower heads have these days.
You mean decreased flow, not pressure.
Waffling! WAFFLING! :mad:
Actually sir, if you had looked a little more closely at that page you will find a link that shows that The Master has now, thanks to modern computer software, been able to give a much more definitive account.
I am not sure quite what you mean by “fly up,” but last time I used a shower with a curtain, it still bulged inward.
Using an inner liner shower curtain with an outer curtain will help stop it from flying up, too. But I’m guessing the low-flow showerhead is the main reason.
I’m redoing the upstairs bathroom right now and showering in the downstairs bathroom. A simple shower stall, low-flow head, vinyl shower curtain (weighted at the bottom) and it flies all over the place.
Come on over, stand in the shower, and the curtain will whip you to death.
I have never experienced this phenomenon. I’m intrigued.
Wouldn’t decreased flow be a direct result of decreased pressure?? I’m not a hydrologist or physicist or anything, but wouldn’t the two be directly related??
IANA Scientist but I do know you can have lower flow and still keep the pressure high (e.g., use smaller or fewer holes in the shower head) or can have high flow and low pressure (take the shower head off entirely and just have water come out of the pipe.)
njtt hits the motherlode! Prof Schmidt won the Ig Nobel Prize for Physics in 2001 with his pioneering paper on the propensity for shower curtains to stick to one’s butt. It’s a vortex thing, a bit like a continuous dust-devil, and thus far no-one has been able/bothered to disprove this theory, and so it currently stands as the definitive answer to the question of shower-curtain suckiness.
And this is now considered standard. My mom freaked out when I used the plastic curtain by itself on our finally repaired shower.
That is a potential factor in my current shower compared to my showers of yore too. Maybe I will do a test and report back…
Am I missing something here? I always assumed the cause was circulation of warm air up and out of the space above the curtain and cooler air flowing in from floor level to replace it, pushing the bottom of the curtain inward.
While that is part of the equation, the fact that the curtain movement will occur with cold water shows that it’s not the dominant force behind the effect.
This is it. I have a small shower in the bedroom and I have experimented with this. I can get in and let the shower run on cold for 5 minutes with no inward flow. Within seconds of turning it to hot I get lots of inward movement. Simple physics.
Are you suggesting something different than the second article linked here describes?