04/07/13 to 06/07/13 - We arrived in Quito and took a trolley bus to the New Town where we stayed the night. The next day we explored the Old Town on foot. Unlike most South American cities, which put a huge statue of Christ on top of the nearest mountain, Quito is different. It has a huge angel statue instead. The highlight of the old town was the Basilica. We climbed the towers and had good views of the city as well as a glimpse of the inner workings of the basilica’s clocks.
Now what is Ecuador most famous for?
1. Offers of asylum to leftist whistle-blowers and wiki-leakers?
2. Panama Hats (yes, they really are from Ecuador, not Panama)?
3. Being situated on the Equator?
We’ll let you decide, but we had a disagreement between the two of us over the legitimacy of the old belief that the water spins in the opposite direction in the southern hemisphere. We all remember the Simpson’s episode where Bart phones a kid in Australia to do the test and he runs 2 miles to the outside toilet (or dunnie) and the water spins the other way. Being just 30kms from the Equator, we thought Quito the perfect place to do the first of our experiments to see if the ‘Coriolis effect’ really has an effect in reality.
To make this a fair test we bought a small round bucket and made a hole in the bottom. We would use the same bucket in both hemispheres. In the kitchen of our hostel in Quito, we filled the bucket with water, with our finger over the hole in the bottom. We released the finger and the water drained. After a second or two we could clearly see the water begin to spin anti-clockwise. Like true scientists, we had to repeat the experiment several times to make sure it was no fluke. Sure enough, every time the water span anti-clockwise. Dave was sceptical (surprise!) and suggested trying a different corner of the room, away from the sink. To our amazement, the water span clockwise… twice. We tried a third time. This time, the water span anti-clockwise again. We scratched our heads to explain why as we’d been careful to hold the bowl level, and took turns holding it to eliminate any bias. We went to bed convinced that the effect was an urban myth, we had disproved the Coriolis effect… or had we?
The next morning we hopped on a bus (or rather 4 different buses) and paid a visit to the Mitad del Mundo (Middle of the World). This was a monument and tourist site dedicated to the line of the Equator. We wandered around the museums which explained how scientists first calculated the dimensions of the earth on this site, and the monument was erected here in the 1930s. We took a few photos like everyone else, with one foot either side of the equator line… only it wasn’t the ‘real’ Equator line.
GPS technology has since proved the original calculations incorrect by about 300 metres, but the Ecuadorian government had already built a new monument and lots of tourist infrastructure on the old site, and were reluctant to move it (it would be too expensive), so they left the monument and ‘fake’ Equator line here. However, a private company has seized the opportunity and set up a new monument and museum 300m away, they charge an extra dollar, so you can say you’ve stood on the ‘real’ Equator. They also go one better than the government site and show a series of demonstrations and experiments… one of which, was the water down the drain experiment. We were interested to see how everyone would react when it was all proved to be a myth… BUT… somehow we were the ones who were dumbfounded.
The guide first took a sink of water standing directly over the equator line. She pulled the plug and the water drained, but with no visible rotation at all. Then, she moved the sink to the south, repeated it, and the water drained clockwise. She then moved the sink to the north, and surprise, surprise, the water drained anti-clockwise. We were completely at a loss to explain how she had managed to prove this when our own experiment couldn’t even get a consistent result in one hemisphere… she had managed to do it just by moving a few yards either side. We were convinced she had faked it somehow, but we struggled to see how she could have done it so reliably. Completely confused, it was time to send an email to Flora’s dad (a physics professor) to find out just what was going on.
By the way, we also did some other experiments that ‘proved’ that it’s easier to balance an egg and that it’s harder to walk in a straight line with your eyes closed on the Equator. Well, that’s enough science for one week… next time... How to lose 1 kg in just a few hours!
After all the fun was over… we jumped onto another couple of buses to the town of Otavalo, 2 hours north of Quito.
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