written by Anne Cox

Tracking the Coriolis Force uses the Tracker video analysis tool to model the motion of a  ball rolling with constant velocity on a rotating merry-go-round. Video includes the motion of the ball as viewed from the rotating reference frame of the merry-go-round.  Using the Coriolis force equation, students build a model of the motion.

The zip file contains the activity handout, video and Tracker file. The video comes from YouTube and can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAX3ALdienQ.

A talk about this activity from the AAPT Winter Meeting 2013 can be found at http://tinyurl.com/trackerCoriolis.

To open the Tracker file, download and run Tracker from http://www.cabrillo.edu/~dbrown/tracker/. Tracker is free.

• Download coriolis_tracker.zip - 890kb Compressed File

Published June 7, 2012
Last Modified January 8, 2013

This file has previous versions.

Instructions for using Tracking the Coriolis Force resources.

• Download Tracking the Coriolis Force.pdf - 463kb Adobe PDF Document

Published June 7, 2012
Last Modified January 8, 2013

This file is included in the full-text index.
This file has previous versions.