Science!

[dvandom]

Well, more like science, not SCIENCE!. But still. Back in grad school I worked out an explanation of the Coriolis force that didn't require using all sorts of complicated principles. It had holes, and I found a better explanation. That has stood until recently, when a guy in Germany started emailing me about a problem with it. I'm still not totally sure what he's getting at, but clearly it's time for another revision. And here it is! The part I need to re-explain in the most depth isn't done yet, I'm still building the props.

Edit: I borrowed a basketball from the lab equipment room and used it and some micro-Gundam figures to finish up my explanation.

Comments

[foomf.livejournal.com]

The arbitrary line you draw on the ground is also a great circle segment. It's illusionary to think it's flat; on a sphere, there is no flat. You can demonstrate it by drawing all this on a balloon, then inflating it.

If you have a transparent bowl and the balloon is too opaque to see through, you can demonstrate the 'flat' part by showing the flat balloon under the bowl, then inflate the balloon and draw the line on the outside. The curve becomes immediately obvious when you look from the 'start.


Yeah, I figured all this out in third grade when the teacher was trying to explain parallel lines and that they don't ever meet, except of course in a curved space-time, and she didn't understand that. This is what happens when you teach new math before you teach arithmetic - the kids can grasp really interesting concepts but cannot perform simple calculations in reasonable time.