How to poop without splashback

A video explains why and when poop creates splashback inside the toilet

Poop can be a problem, especially in a public toilet. But whether you are at home or somewhere else, who hasn’t dealt with the sound and occasional embarrassment caused by toilet splashback? Now, you don’t have to anymore, because science discovered a solution.

According to this article, the poop splash is brought on when your poop displaces water and creates air bubbles in liquid at the bottom of your toilet bowl. If you’ve ever spent time dropping objects into the water, you’ve undoubtedly worked this out. As there is nowhere for that air to escape, the pressure difference forces the water to slap back together.

Depending on the size, shape, and angle of your poop, slapping back together is what causes water to shoot out of the bowl, producing impressive jets. If your poop hits the water at an angle, as most do, it can form a water jet higher than the original drop height, which means that your bum is about to be wet.

Yet, the magnitude of the splashback is more affected by the size of the cavity that the poop creates in the water than by the kind of poop. The largest voids are really created by little, round poop that falls directly into the water, which results in the most splashback. In the video posted with this post, you can watch all of these experiments being conducted in slow motion.

So how do you solve the issue? It all basically comes down to the water’s surface tension, which is determined by the force per unit length. Surface tension causes the water molecules at the surface of open water, like a toilet bowl, to “stick” together, almost like a film. This implies that when an object is thrown into the water’s surface, the outer layer pushes down and creates a void around it. We also know that such a void causes splashback.

All you have to do to stop this splash is change the water’s surface tension. It sounds complicated, yet all you need is toilet paper, which is a straightforward and accessible item.