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Posted to uk.d-i-y
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Sandbags in the shower
wrote:
Pyriform wrote:
Sadly, this is a scientific myth. The Coriolis effect is too small
when acting on a body of water that small to have any effect.
You're wrong there mate. The experiment was conducted at Melbourne and
Cambridge universities some years ago; mind you, it involved vast
underground tanks where the water was allowed to settle for days
before pulling the plug
Hardly surprising that it worked then! I never claimed that the coriolis
force did not exist, only that it would not be a factor in determining the
direction of water rotation down a domestic plughole.
but was originally inspired by numerous
observations in less controlled environments where people noticed
that it seemed to go one way more often than the other and followed
up by making enquiries over here.
I'm fairly sure that this is where the myth part begins. It's very easy to
persuade water to rotate in either direction. And whilst it is true that
there is a tiny hemisphere-dependent preference for one direction over the
other, in practice this effect is dwarfed by any initial rotation of the
body of water (such as that imparted by a tap when filling the basin). It
would only show up in large scale statistical studies of the phenomenom (of
the kind that no sane researcher would undertake), and would certainly not
be noticed by the man in the bath.
On the original subject of the post, none of the options are
practicable for various reasons, but thanks to all for the
suggestions.
Obviously you know your requirements better than us, but I'm puzzled by why
a wheelchair-traversable permanent barrier could not be installed. I
immediately thought of the strips used for protecting cables run across
floors, and would have mentioned them in my earlier reply, if someone had
not beaten me to it!
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