5 ms·

I'm not sure that any experiment is perfectly reproducible. Though I would be very surprised to see a hurricane going the wrong way at mid-latitudes! Anyway,

I'm not sure that any experiment is perfectly reproducible. Though I would be very surprised to see a hurricane going the wrong way at mid-latitudes! Anyway, we're in agreement that it is a thing, and we just need a big enough tub to demonstrate it, correct? The force is perfectly calculable, and we can compare that to the effect of, say, a breeze across the top. ps. the reference https://www.nature.com/articles/2071084a0 https://www.nature.com/articles/2071084a0 "Published: 01 September 1965 The Bath-Tub Vortex in the Southern Hemisphere LLOYD M. TREFETHEN, R. W. BILGER, P. T. FINK, R. E. LUXTON & R. I. TANNER pps. my earlier mention https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15122988 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15122988 Nature volume 207, pages1084–1085(1965)"

Jedd 6y ago
Yeah, I can't access that Nature link from 1965. AIUI the math is that the delta in acceleration across a 1m bathtub north-to-south would be 1x10-8 m/s/s due to Coriolis ... so your starting conditions would have to be at a level of perfection that I don't think anyone's achieved, certainly not some bloke in a drafty garage with a kiddy's wading pool one time. I accept that in theory that delta definitely exists, but I don't accept that it can be, has ever been, observed at the tiny scales of a few metres, let alone the 100mm (toilet flushes) that's typically asserted by the faithful. I accept that across dozens of kilometres we definitely do see this phenomenon as it generates consistent, hemisphere-dependent, large wind events (eg hurricanes) once you get a good way from the equator.