Leonard: What would you be if you were attached to another object by an inclined plane, wrapped helically around an axis?
Sheldon: Screwed.
-Big Bang Theory
Last week in my Kinematics, Dynamics, and Controls class, we began to quantify screw motions - translating while rotating.
These motions are the vortexes that we see when we flush a toilet, or when we remove the plug after a bath. The rotational forces can be attributed to the coriolis effect, while the translation forces are due to gravity.
This reminds me of the whirlpool science project done by taping together two soda bottles and inducing a vortex by spinning it circularly:
Update: this is probably not true. The Coriolis forces are negligible compared to the geometry of the toilet/sink. But they're there!
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