User:John R. Brews/Coriolis force

The Coriolis force is a force experienced by a object traversing a path in a rotating framework that is proportional to its speed and also to the sine of the angle between its direction of movement and the axis of rotation. It is one of three such inertial forces that appear in an accelerating frame of reference due to the acceleration of the frame, the other two being the centrifugal force and the Euler force. The mathematical expression for the Coriolis force appeared in an 1835 paper by a French scientist Gaspard-Gustave Coriolis in connection with the theory of water wheels, and also in the tidal equations of Pierre-Simon Laplace in 1778.

Although sometimes referred to as an apparent force, it can have very real effects.