Simon wrote: << Yes, this is an urban legend, actualy some people tried it several times.

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Thanks for the references! But in fact, it is really an issue of the precision of the experiment, judging from the 1962 MIT experiment cited by Cecil Adams that Simon linked to. When it's done very very carefully, letting still water drain from a symmetrical vessel in a symmetrical manner *does* result in counterclockwise swirling in the Northern Hemisphere! (Indeed the sense of the swirl is likely to be random for a casually done home experiment in an actual bathtub, since the teeny Coriolis effect will almost surely be swamped by the asymmetry of the situation.) --Dan _____________________________________________________________________ "It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that certain je ne sais quoi." --Peter Schickele