Why is it that when one is taking a hot shower, the shower curtain tends to be pulled inward, inside the shower(as opposed to being pushed outward)?
Asked by: MLR
Answer
Hot air is less dense than usual air and therefore rises up. This takes effect in a shower where the hot water heats up the air on the inside of the curtain. This hot air rises upwards creating a very partial vacuum in the inside of the shower. This results in decrease in the pressure on the inside of the curtain as compared to the pressure on the outside of the curtain. This results in the curtain being 'pushed' inwards.
Answered by: Madhur Upman, High school student
'The strength and weakness of physicists is that we believe in what we can measure. And if we can't measure it, then we say it probably doesn't exist. And that closes us off to an enormous amount of phenomena that we may not be able to measure because they only happened once. For example, the Big Bang. ... That's one reason why they scoffed at higher dimensions for so many years. Now we realize that there's no alternative... '