Have you ever heard of the superstition "Don't Pee on the Worm"?

Since an aqueous reaction happens through intermolecular collisions, the propagation speed of any reaction in solution is limited by Brownian motion. So you are correct: there is no poison that a worm could produce at the bottom of a urine stream that would have any effect at the top of the stream. Specifically, exactly zero molecules of poison (or the reaction products of the poison) will ever reach the top.

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I always step on crack to maximize return.

Who doesn’t.

Tsk! Everyone knows that you if you step on the cracks it’s the bears that will get you.

ETA (some time later) to provide poetic proof:

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Isn’t it rather tricky to move across a urine stream? It’s moving liquid after all and that would take quite a bit of energy to do?

zMd0evV

So I did some cursory Googling and it seems like the toxin doesn’t travel up the stream but rather small children are short and so their penis would generally be in range of the worm’s outgassing. Toxin + sensitive mucous membrane = ouch.

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It’s total bullshit. There’s no mechanism by which any poison could diffuse up the stream of urine faster than it’s flowing down. Diffusivity in liquids is about D = 1x10^-9 m^2/s, and assuming a urine stream 1m long that gives us a diffusion velocity scale of v = D/L = (1x10^-9 m^2/s)/(1 m) = 1x10^-9 m/s or 1 nanometer/second. According to this study the average velocity of urination is around 3 m/s, or over 1 billion times faster (cue Dr. Evil meme).

Not to mention that due to the Plateau-Rayleigh instability it will have broken into droplets before then anyway:

The stream of urine experiences instability after about 15 cm (6 inches), breaking into droplets

So even if the diffusion were super-physically fast, it still can’t jump from the air to the individual droplets to the unbroken stream of urine.

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I can appreciate someone science-ing the shit out of their responses. A+

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Also, electric fences. Don’t pee on electric fences - unless someone is shooting video to post on YouTube. And don’t stick your bare ass against an electric fence, either.

(Brief moment of daintily exposed cheekage.)

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I think a more reasonable assumption for any genital irritation from children peeing on worms is that the urine irritates the worm into releasing some type of gas that irritates the child. I think an even more reasonable assumption is a myth to keep kids from peeing in public, but if we work from the assumption that the story is accurate gas seems more reasonable than liquid.

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It would have to be a hell of a lot of gas though, enough to turn them into balloons.

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Surely there are more little boys ready and willing to pee on things than there are worms easily available to be peed on for this to be the dissuading argument?

Plus, if I were the little boy in question, pointing out I can’t pee on this one thing would lead me to start asking what things I can pee on? It would open up a whole new world, and before you knew it, I would be on some kind of list.

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Forget about peeing on a worm. Walk without rhythm, you won’t attract the worm. I can’t emphasize this enough. If you walk without rhythm, you’ll never learn.

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Ford Edsel!

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Reminds me of this:
Don’t Pee in the Millenium Falcon

Excerpt:

Piss? Piss in the Millennium Falcon? I just stood there a few minutes in state of disbelief. Then I went ballistic. I screamed, I yelled, I acted sufficiently horrified, all the while fighting the urge to let out this maniacal laugh. The laughter that comes from witnessing the absurd.

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Well done!

And now I will have that song in my head for the rest of the night.

Yay!

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Or, the worm is like a skunk and it sprays a liquid in the direction of the attacker.

Okay, so you’ve made up the “research”, did you just make up the whole story? I want to talk to your mother-in-law.

Bud Cort!

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