Broken Secrets

Despite what you may believe, being in the secret business is not glamorous. Nothing in school prepares you for this many late afternoons, drinking whipped cream topped drinks at Starbucks.

Actually, college did prepare me for that, but it’s still not glamorous. Take my word for it. Just the other day I was sitting by the pool thinking, “what am I going to write about for tomorrow?” I couldn’t come up with anything at all.

For inspiration, I moved to the hot tub — maybe some bubbles would help. You wouldn’t believe it, I still couldn’t come up with an idea! It usually comes naturally and the hardest part of my day is answering repetitive questions like, “what is it like to be such a handsome and successful blogger?”

I’m kidding of course, except about the lack of glamor, not that you really expected it to be glamorous anyway. The truth is, I don’t sit by any pool or hot tub and I rarely drink whipped cream topped drinks at Starbucks. I work a normal day job and write this blog at night.

It’s probably a lot more work than you may realize; even before I start writing I spend a lot of time digging for ideas and accurate sources to come up with something I think you’ll find interesting, and sometimes really helpful. The most common real question I get is, “where do you get all of your ideas?” There are two main sources.

First of all, I’m really curious about everything, so I like to read about interesting subjects and usually discover secrets along the way.

My friends, family and fans are the other main sources. Some people submit secrets here and other people let me harass them directly.

While I joke about it not being glamorous, it’s a lot of fun and very rewarding. Today is the blog’s four month milestone and I’m really grateful for all the people who have shared ideas with me and shared this blog with other people… there are too many to name, but you know who you are and you make my work easier.

Today’s secret is no different.

I was emailing with my friend Paul today. He gave me a bucket of secrets and he’s Australian, which lead to this one: the hemisphere does not affect the direction that water drains from a sink, tub, toilet…etc. I always thought it did, but I realized my source was The Simpsons, which is not exactly Scientific American. That said, Lisa’s tiger-repellent rock was pure genius.

Anyway, back to the crapper. It turns out that magnetic, Coriolis or other forces have virtually no impact on the direction you see the water drain from sinks or toilets. Water can drain either direction in both hemispheres.

Many TV shows and chain emails claim that the rotation of the earth (Coriolis force) affects the direction of the draining water, but that is not true. Coriolis forces do affect oceans and very large weather systems, but that is due to their size and gravity, it doesn’t majorly affect a small amount of water in a toilet. The factors that do have a major affect on the toilet water are: the way the water enters the container and the properties of the container itself (shape, tilt, indents…etc).

This just saved you money on prank calls to Australia. Thanks Paul.

Broken Secrets

Written By: Chad Upton

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Sources: Paul, Snopes