What does Bungoma, Kenya have in common with Quito, Ecuador
and Singapore? They sit on the same latitude, roughly between 0 and 1 degrees in the Northern Hemisphere.
What’s life on the equator like? (and I mean almost
literally on the equator- I leave my house in the northern hemisphere to fly
out of the airport in the southern hemisphere).
Well there’s no sign of the big red stripe that’s so
eye-catching on desk globes, but there are some harder to see anomalies going
on. The rotation of water is a particularly cool one. You might know that water
spins counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern
(the Coriolis Effect), but this idea has always been sort of intangible to me. At the
equator crossing in Western Uganda, they have a little roadside exhibit which
makes it much more real.
Let me set the scene: there are 3 yellow basins with holes
at the bottom, one each to the north and south, and one directly on the equator.
They’re each about 5 feet apart. Together you start in the north. The guide
pours a bucket of water into the basin, and then delicately places a recently
plucked flower in the center. As the water drains, the flower sits on top
spinning counterclockwise. Then he walks you a few feet across the equator and
repeats this in the basin there. This time, the same flower whirls in the opposite
direction. Finally, when he places the flower in the center of the 3rd
basin right on the line, it doesn’t move an inch. It sits perfectly placid
until the water drains and it falls through the hole.
In hindsight, it seems obvious that I should’ve taken
videos, but I was so enthralled with this little terrestrial miracle that I didn’t
think of it. Equatorial thrills! Next post will include a decidedly more
celestial equatorial phenomenon, which we contemplated heavily while staying in
a rooftop room at a beautiful beach house on the Kenyan coast last week.
