Why does coriolis work 90 degrees to the direction of travel?

Question

so you fire a rocket from the south pole and it seemingly veers off t the left. But why anyway? We were taught that the earth turns underneath the rocket. but the rocket was in sync with the earth when it was fired. I understood this in the classroom very well but now i seem to have lost it. it would only really make sense if the world sped up while it was airbourne. and why 90 degrees? gyroscopics?

Answer 1

the coriolis effect is noticeable because once the rocket leaves the earth surface she stops being pulled along by the earth. also if you consider that by going sideways with the earth she would travel further before breaking out of the atmosphere. If she launched from the Pole she could go straight up, but then there would be no slingshot effect from the earths rotation.

gyroscopic effect is what helps a gyro appear to defy gravity, using the coriolis effect.

Answer 2

If the rocket moves away from the south pole, the world DOES speed up beneath it.  As it moves northward from latitude 90° south, the ground speed of Earth's surface as the planet turns to the east beneath it increases with the increasing circumference of the planet. The rocket's speed to the east is constant (and zero, if it was fired directly from the south pole), and so as the surface moves faster beneath it, it seems to veer to the left to ground observers.

For example, at the Equator, a person standing on the surface of the planet is moving east at about 1000 miles per hour.  At 45° south latitude, the circumference of the Earth is about 30% smaller, and so a person standing at that latitude is moving east at only about 700 miles per hour.  If the person at 45° latitude is shot from a cannon towards the Equator, he will continue to move east at 700 mph even as the Earth beneath him moves faster and faster, and so he will appear to veer towards the west in comparison with the Earth below.

Answer 3

Tommy, this is because you, the observer is on a moving earth, not because the rocket is veering off. It is all relative to where you, the observer, are. If you were in a spaceship that was not moving, and saw the rocket launch, you would see that it went in a straight line, and the earth still rotated on its axis.

When you launch a rocket from the pole, you loose the inertia from the velocity that the rocket is already going while traveling around the earth's axis. This is why a space port will do better nearer the equator rather than by a pole.

Regards,

Dan