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Coriolis Simulator

You can throw a ball across a spinning disk and watch it curve. Then, if you switch into the non-spinning reference frame, you can see it now fly straight.

  • TypeScript
  • Canvas

Live demo

Click the disk to throw a ball at the ring. Then tick the non-spinning view and throw again.

The Coriolis force is a kind of fictitious force, and this is talked about more in my article about the Coriolis effect. Basically, this means that if you are spinning along with the wheel, you see the ball curve and imagine a force acting on it, but in reality the ball actually flies straight. This is why it’s called fictitious. This is extremely important in earth science because if you scale this up to the size of the planet, it’s the reason why winds curve, hurricanes spin, and ocean gyres form.