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Name: Unknown
Status: N/A
Age: N/A
Location: N/A
Country: N/A
Date: Around 1993
Question:
Why does the shower curtain bell inward (toward you) when you are taking a shower? Is that Bernoulli's principle at work?


Replies:
Up-date April, 2001
A shower curtain will billow into the shower regardless of water temperature. A person taking a cold shower is no safer from a shower curtain attack than the person taking a hot shower. It is the movement of the water (and thereby the surrounding air) that creates the pressure difference, not the temperature of the air. Besides, if it was a thermal difference that caused the curtain to move, then by all rights it should billow outwards, since the tendency is to move from hot to cold.

Elizabeth Wilson


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