why the water turns clock wise in the sink?

Answer 1

it's to do with the center of the earth's gravitation, offset by the center of the earth's magnetism.

Answer 2

It doesn't always. I've lived in both Northern and Southern Hemispheres and studied this for many years. Any effect caused by the Earth's spin is absolutely minimal and is far exceeded by the unequal forces caused by how horizontal the sink is, at what angle is the water fed into the plughole, etc.

Anyway, if the direction WERE due to the Coriolis effect, water would descend anticlockwise in the northern hemisphere, just as winds blow anticlockwise round a cyclone.

Answer 3

i can just second that its not the coriolis force responsible.
the coriolis force has strong influence on things having a large scale like a supertanker or a low pressure area.

There were experiments trying to determine what causes water to turn a specific direction.
the ultimate outcome was that the coriolis force was the weakest effect of all.
everything else was much stronger.
Water temperature and temperature distribution, the form of the sink, movement inside the water, movement on its surface, friction of the water on the ground. the viscosity etc, etc, etc,
the result was that water running down the sink is a chaotic system which 'decides' to turn this or that direction for whatever reason has effect the very moment it 'decides'.
They really flushed bathtubes and toilets millions of times to figure.
Nothing in favor for ANY reason. Decision always for ONE reason and which one was totally out of the blue.

Answer 4

I think no correlation exists for CW/CCW stuff on one hand & Earth gyration, magnetism etc on the other hand. Did any one of answerers do a well-wrought experiment? I’m sure a fine experiment would prove no correlation; and a bathroom sink does not prove anything. One of the Great once told this idea as a joke, lay people took it in earnest. That’s all!

Answer 5

It's due to where and how the water is first hitting the sink (in relation to the drain) and how the sink is shaped. The Coriolis effect, if any, is so small that it really doesn't matter here, contrary to urban legend.

Answer 6

this seemed interesting XP. so i tried it... i filled up a extralarge mcdonalds cup with water and dumped it in the kitchen sink 9 times. i got 8 counter and 1 clockwise. i even pourd all the cups on the same spot at the same angle. as close the the same as i could get it anyway. i'm also above the equater on the east coast in the us. so apprently something else other then the hemisphere has to do with it.

Answer 7

since the water is moving downward, so the direction of torque whould be downward.
Torque = vector product of 'v' with 'r'
where v is the tangential velocity and r is the radius vector of the circular path(directed along the radius away from the centre)
If the water turns counter clockwise, than the vector product of v and r will be upward, which indicate the upward motion of the water. But since the water is moving downward(due to gravity), hence the water has to rotate clockwise.

Answer 8

its to do with the shape of the sink - the flows set up in the liquid determine which way it will spiral down

the coriolis effect is too small by about 6 orders of magnitude to have any effect on the scale of a sink or bath

zero out of 10 for all who cited it

Answer 9

it's coriolis effect
but that force is so small compared to gravitation that the way the water turns clockwise or counterclockwise is mostly due to gravitation, the sink itself...
mine turns counterclockwise and i'm in france metropolitan

Answer 10

It depends in what hemisphere you live in.Also, it only turns clockwise if you view it from above ; if you had a glass sink and looked at it from below the sink, it would be counterclockwise

Answer 11

You must be in the northern hemisphere, because in the southern hemisphere it turns counter-clockwise. Has to do with the earth's rotation, I suspect.