Weatherlawyer wrote:
Sjouke Burry wrote:
Michael Mcneil wrote:
"TeaTime" wrote in message


" wrote in message
ups.com...

Forgive me for sticking my two-pennorth in, but aren't all those phenomena
attributable to the Coriolis effect?
In other words the spin of the earth is moving all the things loose on it?

It is attributed to it but only because the platitude is the only
suggestion that tickles the ears best. It's not verifiable and the
northern cyclones run the wrong way for that explanation (or is it the
other way around.)

In essence, the planet's rotation sets up this directional acceleration
effect, which is also thought responsible in part for the complex currents
in the Earth's core which give rise to the drifting magnetic poles (and the
occasional reversals thereof).
The ocean flow in the N Atlantic basin is some 30 million cubic metres
of water per second through the straights of Florida and 80 million
past Cape Hatteras. (According to the 1998 Encyclopedia Britannica.)
If Coriolis' "force" can do that then it must have the force to do it to
aircraft of insects or both?

And it should be noticeable to fairly mobile objects on the surface
-such as us. Shouldn't it?

In the dim past we calculated the effect on a
steamloc going fullspeed north in Norway.
The coriolis force on that loc was about 100Kg
(or about 1000 Newton).
So thats very small for such a heavy loc.

What is a steam loc?

It seems to me that you can balance a bottle on its head just as easily
on the equator as you can in the poles, given a stable platform.

And that there is no apparent difference in the ease of it for any
location and it doesn't make any difference how large the bottle is.

Am I being extra specially thick today or am I correct?
The loc is short for the thing pulling a train.
The coriolis force only shows when you are moving north/south,
so that the effective distance to the earth rotation axis
changes, moving east/west produces no force.
So several tons moving north at about 100 km/hour gave ~1000
newton force .
(The teacher might have been off a bit in his example).