The Coriolis Effect – a conflict between common （科里奥利效应u2014u2014共同之间的冲突）.pdfVIP

The Coriolis Effect – a conflict between common sense and mathematics Anders Persson, The Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute, Norrköping, Sweden 1. Introduction: The 1905 debate Hundred years ago the German journal “Annalen der Physik”, the same 1905 volume where Albert Einstein published his first five ground breaking articles, provided a forum for a debate between three physicists, Denizot, Rudzki and Tesař on the correct interpretation of the Coriolis effect, in particular how it manifested itself in the Foucault pendulum experiment. The debate was complicated by many side issues, but the main problem was this: if the pendulum’s plane of swing was fixed relative to the stars, as it was often said, why then was not its period of rotation the same, one sidereal day (23 hours and 56 minutes), everywhere on earth and not only at the poles? Instead the period was 28 hours in Helsinki, 30 hours in Paris and 48 hours in Casablanca, i.e. the sidereal day divided by the sine of latitude. At the equator the period was infinite; there was no deflection. This could only mean that the plane of swing indeed was turning relative the stars. But how could then, as it was also said, a ‘fictitious’ inertial force be responsible for the turning? Hundred years later, Einstein’s five 1905 “Annalen der Physik” papers are common ground in the elementary physics education whereas teachers and students, just like Denizot, Rudzki and Tesař, struggle to come to terms with the Coriolis effect. This article will try to explain the complex and contradictory understanding of the deflective mechanism in rotating systems. But first it might be appropriate to remind us what is generally agreed on. 1 th In the 18 century the problems of finding the longitudinal position at sea was of prime importance. One method demanded v