22.12.2006
It's soon christmas and this is definitely the time where everything should just work and you shouldn't have to worry about anything. My toilet doesn't work.
When I studied at the university I did not take the course on fluid dynamics. I know people who did, and they hated it. This does not entitle me to any expert opinions about fluid dynamics, but I can assure you I can tell when others fail badly at something as this is usually rather self-evident.
So when I refer my toilet "not working", it's not like it's entirely broken, but it still ain't working as it should. Let me start by telling you how I feel about toilets and what they should do to be accounted for as being in a "working condition".
The operations of a basic, functioning toilet is simple: Somehow nasty stuff gets down there, and when you flush, water should flow down and generate a force, a stream that drags whatever is in the toilet together with the stream down the tubes and away from me. Like I said: simple.
Back to my toilet, back to fluid dynamics and lets revisit the situation. Nasty stuff in toilet, flush, and bad dynamics for fluids emerges. A good toilet design should make sure the water flows in a nice, streamline fashion. Not so here.
What happens here is that somehow a reverse, upwards-pointing circular movement is generated in the toilet, as opposed to the optimal down-.the-tube movement you would expect. The results for this is interesting.
Lighter material like toilet paper, cigarette-butts or whatever which don't posses a natural weight automatically pulling it to the bottom will be pushed up by the stream generated by the water flowing down in the toilet.
This is obviously wrong. My toilet is doing the exact opposite of what it should and it takes repeated flushing to lure the toilet into actually getting rid of whatever nasty stuff I try to get rid of.
I know it's late. I know you students out there want to take a break since it's christmas and all, but god damn. To those of you who have taken the subject of fluid dynamics and taken the subject lightly, I blame you for this.
You guys just took a shit on christmas.