I think that was my point.
Facts as I know them:
- There is a force that causes large bodies to take on a direction, like
hurricanes and other weather systems, as you point out, called the Coriolis effect.
- Some scientists (or maybe just backyard scientists) applied this to smaller
items, and concluded that a bathtub drain would drain in a particular direction.
I heard this repeatedly as a kid, from different sources. (I studied "popular
science" way back when.)
- When carefully examined, random perturbations in initial turbulence, friction,
etc etc all far outweigh the Coriolis effect at the scale of the bathroom tub,
so this effect could never have been seen.
That's what I was talking about when I said "some scientists". It was those "backyard scientists".
-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker
