eli5 Why do shower curtains always try to touch you while showering?
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[Shower-curtain effect (Wikipedia)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shower-curtain_effect)
[Wired: Shower Curtain Rises on Ig Nobels (2001)](https://www.wired.com/2001/10/shower-curtain-rises-on-ig-nobels/)
> Schmidt said that **the problem seems simpler than it is, and that most of the people who had attempted to answer the question — apparently, this is an old problem — had only provided theories**. Schmidt, however, is an expert on sprays: shower sprays, fuel injector sprays, that kind of thing. A fluid is forced out of a small opening and thrust into the unpredictable world, and it’s David Schmidt’s job to somehow predict it.
> “I realized that they were all weighing in with their opinions,” he said, “and with these computer simulations I was doing” — for his serious research — “I had something at my fingertips that I could use to answer it.”
> After two weeks of number crunching using a spray simulator that only he has, Schmidt discovered the answer. It wasn’t very stunning, but it was still a provable answer — one which nobody else could produce.
> “**Basically, a vortex sets up**,” he said. “**It’s like a hurricane (of air) turned on its side, and in the center of that is low pressure, and that pulls in near the middle of the curtain. But because of the way tension works in a curtain you get the bottom moving in.**”
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