What Causes the Coriolis Effect?

The so-called centre of the world. This monument is in Ecuador.

The questions you may have are: Does our weight fluctuate more or less as we gain altitude? What is the Coriolis Effect caused by? What is the Eotvos Effect caused by?

I’m not positive if being at a greater altitude makes you “weigh” less. A person weighing 150 pounds at sea level would weigh 149.92 pounds at 10,000 feet, according to a piece I discovered, but I can’t find any experimental proof to support this assertion. If it does, I’m confident that it can be explained by factors like pressure or relative concentrations without relying on a fictitious force like “gravity” to do so.

Sinks and commode basins are said to turn one way in the Northern Hemisphere due to the “Coriolis Effect,” while they spin the opposite way in the Southern Hemisphere, giving evidence of the Earth’s rotation. The truth is that toilets and basins do not always rotate in the same direction in either the Northern or Southern Hemispheres! Toilets and sinks in the same home frequently rotate in the opposing directions, based only on the design of the bowl and the angle at which the water enters, not on the Earth’s purported revolution.

The idea that the earth’s eastward rotation would cause the water in a toilet basin to spin makes logic, but in practise the force and speed at which the water enters and exits the container are much too large to be affected by something as minute as a single 360-degree turn over the course of a day. When all is said and done, the Coriolis effect affects Disc rotation in your stereo no more or less than it does bathroom flushes. The shape of the bowl and the angle at which the liquid originally enters that bowl are the main factors that affect the way in which water exits your toilet or washbasin. Does the Earth’s Rotation Impact Baseball Events and Toilets? by Jennifer Horton Science.HowStuffWorks.com

As most storms in the Northern Hemisphere are said to rotate anticlockwise and most storms in the Southern Hemisphere are said to rotate clockwise, the Coriolis Effect is also said to affect bullet trajectories and weather patterns. Long-range bullets are said to tend to hit targets to the right in the Northern Hemisphere and to the left in the Southern Hemisphere. But once more, the same issues persist. Since not all bullets and storms exhibit the behaviour reliably, they cannot be used as evidence for any claim. What about weather, human mistake, and the accuracy of the sight aperture? What about the possible impact of the movements of the aether demonstrated by Michelson-Morley-Gale? Why do most cyclones but not all are impacted by the Coriolis Effect? How do some storms avoid the Coriolis effect if they rotate clockwise in the North and anticlockwise in the South? Why should the two regions be impacted differentially if the Earth’s spin is uniform throughout?

Although I am unfamiliar with the Eotvos effect, it seems to be a combination of two fictitious forces—”gravity” and “the Earth’s spin”—along with some perplexing, complicated mathematics to make the whole thing seem legitimate and advanced. This way, yet another scientist can be honoured by having his name associated with the “effect” he created.