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Plug-hole Pranks

Longitude 15 deg. West, latitude 00 deg. marks the spot of one of the world's most tremendous scientific experiments—an experiment which eventually solved an immense problem which had puzzled men for centuries, had made savants sob, physicists flabbergasted, and lecturers looney.

I refer, of course, to the great "Plug-'Ole Experiment."

For years in first-year Physics, lecturers have suggested that when the plug is removed from a bath the water draining down the hole goes clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere, and anti-clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere, due to the earth's rotation.

On the HMS "Aquitania" in November of last year, a devout group of RAAF scientists gathered around a second-class bath as the ship was crossing the equator.

The ship's navigator leaped backwards and forwards between bathroom and chartroom, giving exact position by the minute. At length the great moment had arrived. The pilot reverently plucked the rubber disc from the hole, and the water began to move. It slowly took an anti-clockwise motion round the hole. The ship's navigator ticked off the seconds on the captain's watch.

"Now!" he said. Would the water change its direction now that the equator had been passed and it was in the Southern Hemisphere?

Would it? It didn't! It just kept on going anti-clock wise. The great problem was solved! Humanity could take its daily bath secure in the knowledge that the earth's rotation had no effect on draining water at all. (Exchange article from "Farrago,"

Melbourne University.)