In meteorology, Buys Ballot's law may be expressed as follows: In the Northern Hemisphere, if a person stands with his back to the wind, the low pressure area will be on his left. This is because wind travels counterclockwise around low pressure zones in the Northern Hemisphere. It is approximately true in the higher latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, and is reversed in the Southern Hemisphere, but the angle between the pressure gradient force and wind is not a right angle in low latitudes.
Famous quotes containing the words buys, ballot and/or law:
“The humblest observer who goes to the mines sees and says that gold-digging is of the character of a lottery; the gold thus obtained is not the same thing with the wages of honest toil. But, practically, he forgets what he has seen, for he has seen only the fact, not the principle, and goes into trade there, that is, buys a ticket in what commonly proves another lottery, where the fact is not so obvious.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I do not think the mere extension of the ballot a panacea for all the ills of our national life. What we need to-day is not simply more voters, but better voters.”
—Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825–1911)
“My hope is ... that we may recover ... something of a renewal of that vision of the law with which men may be supposed to have started out with in the old days of the oracles, who communed with the intimations of divinity.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)