Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships

Department of Physics

University of Toronto

SURF: Coriolis

Coordinator: Natalia Krasnopolskaia

Coriolis force is experienced by all objects traveling any direction over the Earth surface. Steepness of one bank of a river and flatness of the opposite bank is a result of Coriolis force on the water flow!



This project combines two tasks: designing a lecture demonstration of the Coriolis force and designing a lecture demonstration of similarity of a uniform circular motion to a simple harmonic motion.


It is difficult to demonstrate the Coriolis force during a lecture in Mechanics. However, such demonstration will simplify students' understanding of forces on objects in accelerated frames. A nice computer simulation of the Coriolis force effect can be found here


A lecture demonstration that can show how the amplitude, the phase and frequency of a uniform circular motion relates to these parameters in a simple harmonic oscillation will make clearer the ways of measuring and calculating the quantities in the two kinds of motion.


Project outline


Last updated February 29, 2012