Toilet water and gravity

Discussion in 'Physics & Math' started by matthew809, Mar 7, 2011.

  1. matthew809 Registered Senior Member

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    Why does the toilet water spiral down when you flush it, rather than just go straight down in what would intuitively seem to be the most direct and efficient route? Honestly, I'm not exactly sure. But I have an idea that it must be due to both the attractive force of the well, and the repulsive force of the water molecules themselves. It is not as simplistic as just one force acting upon the water. While the attractive force of the well seems to have the upper hand, the repulsive force of the water puts up a fight. It is this reactionary struggle between different forces which creates the spiral pattern as the ultimate path of least resistance. One could observe the motion of Mr. Hankey as he makes his way down the "spiral staircase", and then do some clever calculations and create a model defining Mr. Hankey's path. Computational efficiency would ultimately merge all these separate forces, and describe his path in terms of only one or a few [mathematically correct, but physically incorrect] forces.

    I propose that the observed effects of gravity are due to both an attractive force, and a repulsive force. This is why the Earth stays in orbit around the sun, rather than just crashing straight into it. This is why the stars keep their distance from each other as they spiral around the galaxy. This is why the current theory of gravity does not work at the galactic level without invoking dark matter. Gravitational theory is wrong. This is also why science can not seem to unify the forces.

    Conventional physics assumes that in a vacuum, a body falling straight towards another is an effect that can be simply defined as an attractive force acting upon the bodies; the repulsive force does not come into play until the bodies come into physical contact. I propose that the repulsive force is in play all along.
     
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  3. tashja Registered Senior Member

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    Because of angular momentum and secondary flow.
     
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  5. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Toilets are built that way on purpose. The speed of the water going around in a spiral is much higher than if it simply ran straight down, and it spends much more time getting to the drain, during which it is scrubbing the porcelain.

    The outlets are typically right under the rim where you can't see them without either using a small mirror or simply sticking your head into the bowl. If you do either of those things you'll see that the outlets direct the water in a horizontal direction rather than vertically, and this causes that spiral motion. The weight of the water in the tank, and the tank's position slightly higher than the outlets, creates enough pressure from sheer gravity to ensure that the water exits the outlets with considerable speed, ensuring a nice long spiral with many revolutions.

    The result of all this scrubbing by water under pressure traveling at an oblique angle is self-cleaning. Otherwise you'd have to scrub it yourself after every major use, or at least once a day.
     
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  7. matthew809 Registered Senior Member

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    Yet even without the horizontally aimed outlets, the toilet would still drain in a spiral fashion.

    A better analogy might be a plugged sink full of water, and then releasing the plug.
     
  8. Stryder Keeper of "good" ideas. Valued Senior Member

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    Coriolis effect

    Incidentally you should consider that flowing water could also have it's direction effected by "electromagnetism" [Bending water], this is likely why there is the popular understanding about the water going down a plug whole in different directions based on hemisphere.

    As for Gravitational theory being wrong? Well you are still earth bound young Icarus, so it's stopped you falling into the sun.

    I'm not going to deny that I myself have a different take on Gravity and it's "theory" however the reasoning is based upon infinite universal recursion to generate this full embodied emulation that we all come to call reality.

    The only visable way to explain it, is to take a camera hooked to a television screen and generate a "Feedback loop" where the camera is pointing at the television screen. You end up with an infinite "television within television" picture that disappears right to a point on a horizon where no more can be seen due to the inverse square law. This is only a visible limitation, considering different levels of sophistication within the hardware used would grant an even more infinitesimal distance.

    If it was possible to wave your arm in front of the camera, and take a simple tennis ball and pass it through to an arm acting receptive in the television frame below, you would cause an occurrence where mass is transferred through multiple universes for the duration of the time period viewed (The ball being passed would iterate all the way down the visable structure until it meets the inverse square law horizon). If you kept doing it you would create a "vortex" in the sense that mass would be moving out of existence and it's loss is displaced by the addition of mass from another universe, it would generate a fluctuation.

    This theoretical feat is what you could like to a blackhole, you could query if passing mass through from one reference to another wouldn't cause a "Cascade effect" where each frame of reference is dragged through to the frame of reference below and build up much like a proverbial snowball rolling down a hill until the whole system loses any frames of reference to just a "tunnel".

    Obviously my take on gravity is not parallel to the metaphysics written above, however it does touch upon how 5th dimensional logic can be applied to universe that is a composite of emulated "states". Where each individual "state" is itself an emulation build by one whole universe, therefore no two universes could ever collapse into one universe. (If the theory was the "states" were "atoms", atoms could not merge into one, as each would be non-volatile space)

    [Meh, one day I'll have this cleaned up so it doesn't resort to word soup]
     
  9. Dywyddyr Penguinaciously duckalicious. Valued Senior Member

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    Well at least the topic/ OP is relevant to this thread's next location...

    Cesspool!
     
  10. D H Some other guy Valued Senior Member

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    It is not the coriolis effect. Fraggle is right. Toilets are built that way on purpose. The orientation of the plumbing gives the water angular momentum as it enters the toilet.
     
  11. matthew809 Registered Senior Member

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    480
    That's usually where my threads end up. Maybe that's why I was so drawn to the toilet analogy from the start.

    Is there a reason why you don't think that repulsion may be just as much a factor of gravity as attraction?
     
  12. Emil Valued Senior Member

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    2,801
    And in the bath is formed a "mini maelstrom" when evacuated.

    Maelstrom:

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    And in the sink, and in any tank when it is discharged by free fall.
    Maybe tashja he's right.
    Can you give some link?
     
  13. Dywyddyr Penguinaciously duckalicious. Valued Senior Member

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    For good reason.

    Well one reason why I think (note that this is just my opinion - not backed up by experience, experiment, science or observation, you understand*) is that there's no evidence whatsoever to support the notion.

    * This is (for the hard of understanding) sarcasm.

    You present airy-fairy notions with absolutely nothing in the way of support while apparently being completely unaware of how much work underlies the current state of knowledge.

    For example:
    Other than sheer ignorance what is there to suggest that there's a "repulsive force"?

    Forget I asked. You've obviously got Sheer Ignorance down to a fine art.
     
  14. tashja Registered Senior Member

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  15. Spectrum Registered Senior Member

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    The Earth is spinning which makes the water spin...clockwise if youre in the northern hemisphere and anti-clockwise if youre in the southern hemisphere. I saw a man on a program on television where he had a bucket with a hole in and he went metres from the equator and showed this phenomenon.
    However I would personally study the opposite of a flush, which is when the water is filled. Incidentally the psycholofical concept of optimism or pessimism is a falicy. The glass has either been filled full, and half emptied, or simply filled half-full.
     
  16. D H Some other guy Valued Senior Member

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    It is not the Earth's rotation that makes toilet bowls work the way they do. Nor the little vortex you get in a draining bathtub, or the swirl in a sink.

    From http://www.phys.ncku.edu.tw/mirrors/physicsfaq/General/bathtub.html
    Which Way Will my Bathtub Drain?
    Question: Does my bathtub drain differently depending on whether I live in the northern or southern hemisphere?
    Answer: No. There is a real effect, but it is far too small to be relevant when you pull the plug in your bathtub.​


    On the scale of a bathtub or a sink or a toilet the Coriolis effect is very small and easily overwhelmed by lots of other factors. The Coriolis effect can be observed in very large bathtubs, but only if the bathtub has no peculiar geometries such as pretty curves or an off-center drain, and only if you wait a long, long time (days) after filling it before pulling the plug. Wait for minutes or even hours before pulling the plug and while a vortex may appear, it might well be rotating counter to the direction indicated by the Coriolis effect. Any residual rotation that remains from filling the tub will overwhelm the Coriolis effect.
     
  17. Emil Valued Senior Member

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  18. origin Heading towards oblivion Valued Senior Member

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    Coriolis effect will only be seen on very large features such as low or high pressure weather systems. Even a feature as large as a super-cell thunderstorm will sometimes spin in a clockwise direction in the northern hemisphere, resulting in a tornado that spins clockwise. The majority of the super-cells in the northern hemisphere rotate counterclockwise which is why I consider this to be about the threshold for the Coriolis effect to be seen.
     

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