6 ms·
The Unfortunate Physics of Male Urination
- Ericson2314 10y agoAh, never studied fluid mechanics so feeling vindicated on figuring out both angle of attack and stream breakup remedies.
- dmessing 10y agoIsn't this why sometimes you see a fly or something painted on the urinal to gamify the "experience" to reduce the splash effect? https://orgchanger.com/2012/11/01/a-splash-of-innovation/ https://orgchanger.com/2012/11/01/a-splash-of-innovation/
- Jtsummers 10y agoOne of the manufacturers in the article, Duravit, is mentioned as using this approach to indicate where the "sweet spot" is for aiming to reduce splash.
- DonHopkins 10y agoAlso available with bushes and trumps.
- mercer 10y agoIt's also why some people leave 'trail marks' for the next toilet visitor. Just a common courtesy, really.
- banachtarski 10y agoAt home, I sit always. People think I'm weird for doing it but honestly I hate the mess more than the slight inconvenience.
- gldalmaso 10y agoYou are not alone.
- ekianjo 10y agoIn Japan a large proportion of men also sit at home (based on a recent survey) for the very same splashback complaints from their wives.
- hourislate 10y agoA lot of men don't like to admit to sitting down to piss but as you age your hydraulic pressure seems to decrease and you wake more during the night to piss. Sitting down while half asleep prevents a mess and empties your bladder more thoroughly.
- takk309 10y agoI too sit at home. I have done it for most of my adult life, basically as soon as I had to start cleaning my own bathroom.
- microcolonel 10y agoI find that when I sit down to pee, my penis can touch the rim of the toilet if I'm not careful, it's kinda uncomfortable. It's also very space-inefficient in an office environment. My office is mostly full of men, and we would have serious problems if we didn't have the urinal in addition to two toilets on every floor. A urinal can relieve twice or three times as many people in the same time it takes for a toilet stall to relieve one.
- arm 10y agoBack when I was a kid, on some mornings, I did try sitting down to urinate a few times (basically whenever I was feeling too tired to stand), but I stopped doing that after a while since it would usually hurt (I’m guessing due to the force of all the urine coming out (quite a bit does accumulate after sleeping for 8 – 10 hours) combined with my sitting posture). Since it never hurt while I was standing, I ended up just sticking to that after a while.
- marxidad 10y agoI sit, too, but sometimes it goes through the space between the seat and the bowl.
- mywittyname 10y agoThe one trick urinal physicists don't want you to know about!
- tzs 10y agoIf you ever do that somewhere other than home, be careful. I ran into a toilet at an office where some idiot had installed an elongated seat on a regular sized bowl. It was not difficult to end up in a position where you felt properly positioned based on previous elongated toilets, but in fact your penis was in front of the bowl, aimed right down into your pants.
- BurningFrog 10y ago> People think I'm weird for doing it I only think you're a little weird for telling them.
- banachtarski 10y agoI think if you have roommates or housemates at some point, or live with a girlfriend or wife, it isn't entirely out of the question. This isn't something I'd open with at a bar or something.
- mercer 10y agoSitting for a pee was one of most unexpected and difficult cultural barriers I had to deal with when I lived in Germany. My German flatmates were very serious about it, and most houses I visited, most of them multi-nationality, had signs imploring visitors to always sit. Took me a while, and quite a bit of 'public shaming' to remember to sit. The weirdest part was that whenever I'd have non-German male visitors, we'd usually end up in an argument about the practice because it was perceived to be emasculating! And more than once my guests, otherwise perfectly polite, would just pee standing up anyways.
- squozzer 10y agoWell, there is always the sink. :) Khaki - sit down. Dark pants - stand up.
- homulilly 10y agohow about guys just sit down to pee? it's really not that hard.
- Jtsummers 10y agoMost office and public restrooms (for men) have a ratio of 2:1 or 3:2, urinals to stalls, from my estimation. Sitting down isn't an option when there's a line.
- ekianjo 10y agoYou just wait.
- Jtsummers 10y agoNot always feasible. The brilliant designers of my office gave us a total of 8 urinals/stalls for the men on this floor (same for the other floor, approximately). The ratio here is terrible, about 5:1 men to women (probably worse, actually). There are 200 of us on this floor, 800 in the building. The after lunch bathroom rush means you stand around uncomfortably while waiting for a stall, or use a urinal and get back to your desk.
- ekianjo 10y agoI guess it depends on folks. Usually i plan my bathroom visits outside of the rush hours and i dont wait to have to pee to go. This allows for more flexobility but again maybe not everyone can do that.
- Jean-Philipe 10y agoI do sit. But those guys I know who refuse to sit, do so on the grounds of manhood. Sitting is not manly. Obviously.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- brbsix 10y agoIf you piss into a sufficiently large jug, there's no splashback. Cleaning aside, can't we make such a urinal?
- petepete 10y ago[citation needed]
- kw71 10y agolooks like original research to me
- pecangallery 10y agoIsn't that exactly what Kohler did with that Steward urinal at the end of the article?
- fizgig 10y agoThey didn't address the horrible troughs at old sports stadiums? BTW, I don't know if those still exist. I think Louis CK had a bit about his boy being traumatized by these on his TV show. I recall urinating at "the trough" at a local ball game as a kid (70s or 80s, not 100% sure). It wasn't a pleasant experience.
- theandrewbailey 10y agoThey still exist. You can also find several at fairgrounds.
- abcanthur 10y agoTroughs are great! I'm impressed by the simplicity of it, "this thing must be a cinch to clean! ten seconds of hose, air dry!" I despise the frequent click bait articles about "how to use maths to choose which urinal to use." Use any urinal! Grow up and don't mind your fellow men satisfying their natural impulses just like you. Overcoming "stage fright" is a marker of growing up; I for one admire the old guys who turn into the brass section of a marching band once they enter the bathroom. If you can't let loose in the bathroom after 2 hours at the mall, where is the safe space? The food court? I don't think that being a total priss about these things is the obviously correct way to move forward. Not every man needs the toilet of a Japanese emperor (especially when your half acre of fescue hidden behind your picket fence is the ultimate urinary domain). Also bidets are a joke, end up using twice as much paper just to dry off.
- bitwize 10y agoTroughs are commonplace in Australia. Despite some of them having a continuous trickle of water, they invariably reek -- much stinkier than individual urinals.
- basch 10y agotroughs are so much better than urinals, gets you in and out without waiting for a specific size unit to open up, way more people peeing at once, much bigger target to aim for.
- bobajeff 10y agoLet's break the toilet taboo already. I'm tired of every public restroom I go to being pull to open. Sometimes even the stalls are pull to open (which is hard to do in such a tight space). Also, how about those self cleaning toilets Japan has? And paper seat pads that actually fit the seat they are intended for. Maybe put some elastic band in the paper to hold the paper on the seat.
- marcoperaza 10y agoCan you elaborate on "pull to open" and why it's a problem. I'm not sure what you're talking about.
- Jtsummers 10y agoPulling towards you as you exit. Particularly with stalls: This means you're unhygienic hands are touching a handle that everyone else will have to touch (and has touched). With respect to the bathroom exit: Somehow grown men (and women? Don't use their bathroom so can't say for certain) haven't learned to wash their hands after using the toilet. At least I know who not to shake hands with in my office, and who isn't allowed to touch my workstation.
- theandrewbailey 10y ago"Pull to open" is ambiguous, as doors that pull to open are push to open when you go the opposite direction. Which way does the door swing (into the room or out)?
- taylodl 10y ago"Women want a way to keep the toilet and bathroom floor free of splashing urine, and so does Mrs. Wiener." Mrs. Weiner. That got me chuckling like a 12 year-old boy!
- mywittyname 10y agoThey found the right woman for the interview!
- scotty79 10y agoIsn't the problem of splashback from urinal solved by this: http://www.stephensons.com/12191-thickbox/p-wave-mango-deodorising-anti-splash-urinal-screen.jpg http://www.stephensons.com/12191-thickbox/p-wave-mango-deodo... ?
- jmulvi 10y agoThose plastic mats you find in urinals don't seem to do much to prevent splash back in my experience. It seems like the urinal shown at the end of the article with more of a vase or jug design has a better chance of preventing urine splashing back all over your shoes and pants.
- grodybro 10y agoDefinitely a fan of sitting at home. At work we have these Ekcos (http://ekcos.com/ http://ekcos.com/) splash pads in the urinals. They are very effective.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- tajen 10y agoIt's great to see an article treating the subject seriously! It diverges from the usual explanation "Men are so stupid that they will stop peeing on the floor if you draw a fly in them". Nonobstant that we pee on the floor because said toilets are so dirty that we'd get an STD by getting to close.
- tgb 10y agoThis article misses some of the most pressing questions! Do I aim for the water or the porcelain? Why are there a million varieties of urinals but all toilets are essentially identical in shape? What can we do to mitigate those terrible moments when a stray hair or something causes what should be one stream to become two? How can we best use a urinal at an airport while being forced to take our luggage with us in hand?
- mercer 10y agoToilets seem to come in a ridiculous amount of shapes, at least where I'm from. There's the difference between splash and have-your-poop-on-display type toilets, there's the pull-cord-to-flush, push-a-button-on-the-wall, and more common push-button-on-top-of-basin types of toilets. And then there's the squat toilet. Urinals, on the other hand, are all basically the same and only differ slightly in shape. And now I'm wondering why I bothered to write a comment defending toilet varieties.
- tracker1 10y agoThe low splash urinal is a great idea... I've had it several times over the years, I just then think of how often restrooms are actually updated, and how many years it would be before such a thing became common. Kind of sad really.