Fictitious Force - Mathematical Derivation of Fictitious Forces - Crossing A Carousel

Crossing A Carousel

See also: Coriolis effect#Cannon on turntable and Coriolis effect#Tossed ball on a rotating carousel

Figure 5 shows another example comparing the observations of an inertial observer with those of an observer on a rotating carousel. The carousel rotates at a constant angular velocity represented by the vector Ω with magnitude ω, pointing upward according to the right-hand rule. A rider on the carousel walks radially across it at constant speed, in what appears to the walker to be the straight line path inclined at 45° in Figure 5 . To the stationary observer, however, the walker travels a spiral path. The points identified on both paths in Figure 5 correspond to the same times spaced at equal time intervals. We ask how two observers, one on the carousel and one in an inertial frame, formulate what they see using Newton's laws.