Dr. Steven Novella

If you just have no water, but the toilet's totally working, you can put it in the tank and then flush normally.

Oh, it's great, man.

I didn't want to put any water in my tank.

So you just pour it directly into the bowl, and it flushes like a normal flush.

And it does, but you have to pour it quickly.

Why do you have to pour it quickly?

Yeah.

Does it have to break a seal?

So let me put it all together for you in a way that's... When I was thinking about it, I was like, oh, yeah, this is... It was just more clear to me.

I just never thought about it in this detail before.

So Jay's correct.

You have the bowl, and then there's the pipe that goes up before it curls down, right?

That's called the trap.

And the water level in the bowl is the height of that pipe, right?

Because water seeks its own level.

The water in the tank is closed off from the bowl by the stopper that Kara mentioned, right?

That's right, stopper.

When you flush the toilet, the water in the tank rushes into the bowl and the weight of that pushes it up and over that hump, right?

Over that S curve in the pipe.

Now, Bob is the only one to have mentioned the critical element there.