I did horribly on my AP physics test btw lol
(also got a headache trying to read the wikipedia entry haha)
In: Earth Science
The Coriolis Force is a fictional Force that has to do with your frame of reference to explain why things seem like they’re not moving in a straight line while on something that is rotating.
Imagine it this way, say you have a disk (like a CD or DVD) and a marker.
If you took that disk a drew a straight line with the marker from the center to the edge while it wasn’t spinning, you’d get exactly what you expect, a straight line on the disk. You marker’s “trail” is a straight line.
if you did that same exact motion again, but with the disk spinning underneath your marker where you still just move the marker in a straight line while the disk is spinning beneath it, when you see the trail your marker left on the disk, you’ll see that it’s a curved line, because the disk was spinning underneath it.
There’s a gif of this on the Coriolis Force Wikipedia page that is very nice to visualize this.
This essentially explains why from two different frames of reference, it looks like your marker is following two completely different paths, one curved and one straight, even though it’s the same motion.
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