Picture a circle. Here's its center, here's point A, and here's point B. Point A is twice the distance from the center of the circle than point B. Oh yeah, and it spins from its center.
In two seconds, both points do one full revolution. But, to go all the way around, point A has to go this- far while point B only has to go this far. And we all know if something travels a greater distance in a shorter amount of time, it must be going faster. So point A must be moving faster than point B. Okay, now swap out this flat circle for the Earth and the same thing is true.
All points points closer to the center, say like someone in Greenland, will be spinning slower when compared to points spinning further away from it, say like people in Brazil, closer to the equator. So, if we look at it all flattened out, we can picture something like this. Arrows at the equator travel faster than arrows at the 45 degree line, like we just observed. Now imagine you're a cloud that formed here on the equator.
You'll have the same velocity as the Earth. But then, a gust of wind sweeps you to the north, where the Earth isn't spinning as fast. Due to inertia, your speed remains the same.
You don't get any faster, but everything around you is literally traveling slower. So you, relative to the ground, move ahead of everything else. If you're a cloud that forms at the 45 degree line, you'll also have the same speed as everything around you. But if you drift down to the equator, you'll be moving slower than the ground underneath you, so you'll fall behind. And the same things for the southern hemisphere.
Moving towards the equator always results in falling behind, while moving away results in pushing ahead. Okay, now we're going to go to the equator. Now imagine a low pressure cell. That means all the air around it will get sucked into the center.
But the air coming from the equator will be traveling faster, so it will deflect to the right, while the air coming from the poles will be moving slower, so they'll fall behind and deflect to the left. What this results in is a circular air current spinning counterclockwise. And that's exactly what hurricanes are, low pressure cells spinning because of the Coriolis effect.
Moving this example down to the southern hemisphere, things are reversed. A low pressure cell will still suck in the surrounding air, but now the air coming from above will be moving faster, again deflecting to the right, while the air coming from below is moving slower, again falling behind by moving to the left. This results in a clockwise spin, which is why storms in the southern hemisphere spin this way.
Uh, and that's about it. It's a short video, and that's kind of the point. I hope you got what you came for.
Uh, and the Coriolis effect doesn't really influence toilets, they're just really too small and the direction of the spin more depends on the direction of the spin. on the placements of jets inside the toilet. But that's it, that's the Coriolis Effect. If you liked this short and to the point video, give this video a like, and if you want to see more videos like it, why not subscribe?
I'll be back next week with another video, so until then, thanks for watching.