Jiggle the handle!

The flush toilet may be the most confounding appliance in the home, at least for non-plumbers. You think, How hard can it be? It's got no electronics, no gears. It's a fixture, not an appliance. And then you have to put in a new gasket or lever or chain, and you try to calibrate the proper length of the chain and height of the float and give in the handle, and pretty soon you're ready to throw the toilet out the window and start doing your #1s out the window as well.  

My dad was not a plumber, but he was extremely handy. And yet even he was reduced to advising us to jiggle the handle to stop the water running when the damn flapper would not close for whatever reason. He got sick of trying to get it to behave.

Toilets are touchy things. A lot of us are confused by fluids anyway. They seem to defy expectations. There's no reason why a siphon ought to work -- but once you start it going, though, the water draws the water behind it in what seems like perpetual motion. Of course, there is a reason why it works, but that involves like knowledge of gravity and air pressure and hydrostatic pressure and capillary action and surface tension, and now your head hurts. All you wanted to do was steal some gas from your neighbor's car and you gotta think about science and math? 

Yes, you do! What, for example, is a ripple? You've seen them in ponds, lakes, potholes -- maybe even a drop in the toilet bowl has created a lovely ripple. But can you describe it mathematically? Well, some very serious thinkers have been working on the ripple situation for some time. It's harder than you'd think. 

Let's face it -- water is weird. Most things shrink when they freeze -- water expands. You can't compress water; there's just no room between the molecules. If water was not so strange, life as we know it would be impossible. Without capillary action, there'd be no plants, no trees, no us. And until we meet the Rock Men of Planet Srumptk, we're looking at our basis of life as the only thing possible in the universe. So thanks, water! 

And don't forget to jiggle that handle. You wouldn't want to waste water!