This is a guest post by astropixie, one of our intrepid SPS interns, who contributes to the educational physics site Physics To Go When I was sixteen, I visited Australia. The first thing I did once I checked into the hotel was fill up the sink in the bathroom, throw a gum wrapper on the surface, and drain the water, watching to see which direction the wrapper would spiral downward. If it went counter-clockwise, everything I learned from public school and television would be vindicated. If not, I intended to blame the shape of the sink and continue to live in my fantasy world—a world where the turn of the Earth affects the water in my sink but curiously disregards almost everything else in my daily life. Those familiar with the Coriolis force will know that I was a moron in high school (and can rightfully wonder what I am doing writing for a physics blog today). But it is not my fault. For some reason, my eighth grade science teacher told us with certainty that this experiment was
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