Could someone explain what Coriolis force is in plain language? Thanks so much!

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I did horribly on my AP physics test btw lol

(also got a headache trying to read the wikipedia entry haha)

In: Earth Science

7 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Have you ever been on a carousel? One of the old-fashioned ones, with horses and cars and helicopters and whatnot. Slow enough to be safe, fast enough to be entertaining. If you tried to walk a straight line through the center from one end to the other wile the whole thing was spinning, you’d stumble – because of coriolis forces. Moving inward from the outside would mean your body experiences a sideways deceleration (since the outside of the carousel spins faster then the center), and moving outward from the center you’d experience a sideways acceleration. Roughly the same thing applies to a planet – everything **not** moving straight along a circle of latitude will experience the same decelerating or accelerating forces as you on the carousel, depending on the direction of movement.

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