People who read soc.culture.australian often have to answer a
number of questions about our country. These vary from the practical (Will
an American video recorder work with an Australian TV? What voltage is
used in Australia? What side of the road to Australians drive on?) through
to the curious (Does water really go down the plughole in the opposite
direction? What does Vegemite taste like?), to the, well, fairly clueless.

	Recently we had the following thread:

>From Grube (grube@aol.com):

I am coming to Australia for a 3 year stay. Should I bring my CD's to play
on Aussie equipment?

>From: adrose@news.gate.net (Adrian Rose)

You will need an American to Australian converter device.This is usually
hard wired into the CD player by a reputable Australian tech.They are all
familiar with the device.Just pop into any CD store and request the phone
# of the nearest CD converter tech.Its usually only around $30 and you
will not even know it had been done.You will be able to play not only US
cds,and Australian,but as a bonus,European ones too!

CAution-do not try to play bootled CDs after the conversion,you will ruin
the cd player.

>From: adrose@news.gate.net (Adrian Rose)

Sorry about that last post-to play your US cds in Australia,they merely
need to be passed thru a strong magnetic or x-ray field,such as you get at
Customs.Be sure to pass each one thru separately,as bulk passage may leave
the ones in the middle unplayable in Oz.

>From: "Mark A. Gray" <markg@ssec.wisc.edu>

Well...this may gave worked for you, but I found that the only way the get
'em playing was to smear the shiny side with a very thin layer of
vegemite. 'Course this makes the inside of your CD player rather sticky,
so make sure you have lots of tissues.

>From: andersen@s4.elec.uq.edu.au (Hans Andersen)

Don't listen to them.  To play American CDs in Australian CD players, you
will need to regroove them.  This is because Australian CDs have a
different track-width (i.e. 10 ums instead of 5 ums).  To do this you will
need to buy some fine-grade sandpaper.  Try to find some with a grain size
of between 8 and 12 ums (micrometers for non-technical people).  Put a
piece of the sandpaper on a table with the rough side up.  Now put your CD
on the sandpaper and turn it slowly in a clockwise direction, pushing down
hard.  Oiua la (spit) - now you have Australian standard CDs.

Good luck and I hope you enjoy Australia.

>From: M.J.Jennings@amtp.cam.ac.uk (Michael Jennings)

	No. That is completely wrong. Australian CDs are exactly the same
as American ones except for the fact that the 'groove' goes in the
opposite direction. That is whereas an American groove goes inwards as you
go clockwise an Australian groove goes inwards as you go anti-clockwise.
This is because Australian cars drive on the left and American cars drive
on the right. If the groove direction was not reversed there would be
parity problems with car CD players. Unfortunately, this means that you
cannot play an American CD on Australian equipment.

>From: spg@Xenon.Stanford.EDU (Stephen P. Guthrie)

You smartarse. Obviously this is nothing to do with the side of the road
cars drive on. Do you seriously expect anyone to swallow that? Anyone with
a brain knows that it's related to which direction water goes down the
plughole in the Southern hemisphere. In other words in the US the cd
rotates in a clockwise direction. In Australia it rotates anticlockwise.
Of course this is also true if you play your cds in South America for
example. This is actually quite neat because if you play your beatles cds
in the Southern hemisphere you hear all this neat 'backwards masking'
stuff about Paul being dead and taking marijuana. Also I heard that you
hear all sorts of satanic stuff in other rock albums, but I'm not a fan
myself. My question: has anyone done any experimets about playing cds at
the equator or at the notrh pole? At the equator do your cds stop playing
altogether. What about in a reduced gravity environment, like in a free
faling elevator?

>From: leslie@brisbane.DIALix.oz.au (Tye Leslie Sanders)

You're all a bunch of liars!!!! In Australia the initials C.D. stand for
Completely Dislexic which means that the bits are scattered at random all
over the disc. All Australian C.D. players are programmed to randomly
search over the disc to find the right bit to play next. It is very
unlikley that it could cope with a disc where all the bits were in order.
I would advise you to record your discs onto Hi-Fi video tape and connect
an Australian VCR to a stereo system. Australian and American VCRs are
definitely compatible.

>From: "Mark A. Gray" <markg@ssec.wisc.edu>

I can't speak for a reduced gravity environment, but I can speak for the
equator.  It is interesting that you should bring it up, since many CD's
simply do not spin at the equator (or near it actually).  In Singapore
(for instance) they had to ban a whole bunch of CDs or have them altered
so that they would play correctly ('corse if they had a bit of vegemite
their problems would be solved).  Video tapes and books(!) seem to suffer
the same fate their.

Why don't books work properly at the equator?  And I have another
question: Short of smearing every page with vegemite, how do you get a
northern hemisphere book to work properly in the southern hemisphere?
(I'll be bringing some books home with me when I leave here, so I need to
know).

Thanks in advance.

>From: leslie@brisbane.DIALix.oz.au (Tye Leslie Sanders)

Re-your querey on playing CDs in reduced gravity, it is not widely known
that on the last Space Shuttle mission it was decided to test the effects
of playing a compact disc in zero gravity with disasterous results.

When the disc was played, instead of the disc spinning, the entire vehicle
began to spin while the disc remained motionless, turning the entire
spacecraft into a giant centrifuge, nearly crushing the astronauts to
death before the commander was able to crawl to the machine and press the
stop button.

It has been suggested by some at NASA (who have now been dismissed for
discussing government secrets) that a compact disc was the cause of the
destruction of the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1985. As you may recall,
this was the first mission to take a civillian into space. To ease her
mind during take-off it was decided to simulate an environment of Earth
similar to that of take-off pressure so they decided to play a CD of
elevator music to give her the feeling that she was riding up in the lift
at her local shopping centre. The craft could not cope with the enormous
centrifugal force generated by the spinning disc and broke apart
approximately 1 minute after take-off. It was decided to cover up their
gross negligence by saying that the o-ring seals in the booster rockets
were faulty.

All this is absolutely true or my name is not Ronald Reagan.

>From: bobhilt@eskimo.com (Bob Hiltner)

This is a complete load of crap, and probably a troll.  The 'Borealis
Effect' (or 'Australis' in the sourthern hemisphere) could in no way
overcome the power of the motor in a cd player.  Besides, the 'groove'
went out in the 60's (70's?).  I'm no electrical engineer, but I'm
guessing that any backward playing effect is due to the 220v power
conversion (which would show up on euro equipment as well) or the reverse
polarity down under.

As for the gravity-free environment, who gives a shi*t?  I think the
astronauts have their hands full anyway, and probably can get good FM
reception from any station on earth if they need music to dance by...

Some people are so clueless!

>From: jtchew@netcom.com (Joe Chew)

Since the Earth rotates in the opposite direction in the Southern
Hemisphere, the AC power there is supplied 180 degrees out of phase with
ours.  Thus your CD should work just fine, although some audio purists
insist on a motor- generator set to supply "American" electricity and then
determine the phasing themselves.

>From: oauld@ponder.csci.unt.edu (Orion Auld)

At the equator, the cd's stop rotating, so the cd players there must
rotate the laser about the stationary cd.  The units are very expensive.

By contrast, at the north pole, cd players are very cheap.  This is
because neither the laser or the cd require a motor to provide rotational
energy; the cd is placed precisely on the north pole, tied to the
firmament so that it doesn't spin , while the laser is fixed to the earth,
slightly off-center, and the earth provides the rotation.

>What about in a reduced gravity environment, like in a free faling
>elevator?

The cd's are virtually weightless, so they can be very massive and yet
consumers will have little difficulty operating them.  I hope that answers
your question.

>From: gunson@ocean.mit.edu (Jim Gunson)

I'm glad you brought this up.  The variation of the Coriolis force with
latitude (zero at equator, max at north pole, min at south pole), gives
rise to the so-called beta effect. Basically what happens is that when a
clockwise-spinning object, in the northern hemisphere, moves north it
speeds up, when it moves southe it slows down. I've conducted experiments
whilst driving my car here in Boston: if I head north on route 93 at 75
mph with Kylie's "Locomotion" on the CD player, the pitch of her voice
goes higher, but you have to be going pretty fast to notice this.  Heading
west or east this doesn't happen. To the original poster, if you do find
you're having trouble with the Coriolis force adversely affecting your US
cd's in australia, try turning the cd player upside-down.

>From: Adrian Rose <adrose@gate.net>

No,no,no...................please dont confuse the Coriols effect with the
Doppler effect-the two are quite unrelated,and the Doppler effect is
ALMOST unnoticeable,when playing out-of-area CDs,or even records.

The effect was most noticeable on 78's,but that's now academic.

BTW,I am able to offer the conversion at only 75cents (us),if done in
bulk.E-mail for quotes.

>From: pholman1@aol.com (PHolman1)

No if regrooved in the N Hemisphere the must be spun counterclockwise,
remember Aussie turntables etc spin the opposite way, ps Marmite works as
well as Vegimite.

>From: Armadillo <mike@geophy.curtin.edu.au>

No, American compact discs will only work if you drive on the right-hand
side of the road. But I wouldn't expect an aol.com user to know these
things.