Flushed away

 

 Okay, so a belief is held that a toilet will flush water counter-clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere, and clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere. This is then often attributed to the Coriolis effect and said to be completely verified and backed up by videos online of American and Australian toilets flushing in different directions. However, this is a great misconception. The Coriolis effect* can't actually be the reason for this though. It doesn't make sense because  "toilets—and even tornadoes—are too small to be affected by the Coriolis, whose force would only begin to directly influence a storm's swirling mass if it were approximately three times larger than the supercell storm systems that typically generate tornadoes" (www.scientificamerican.com). So why the change? Well, I can't be sure of the origin of this myth. However, the reason toilets flush in different directions could be due to the manufacturers.

*The Coriolis effect is "an apparent force which describes how objects veer to the left or right when traveling on something that’s rotating" (www.sciencegeekgirl.com).