There is one experiment that you can do that will prove once and for all that the earth is a spinning globe, and not a flat dome covered disk.
The experiment will enable you to observe the Coriolis effect, which proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the earth is a globe. There are many more experiments one can do to show that the world is spherical, however this one cannot be explained away without retreating to the ridiculous.
If you are wondering why I should bother to use my energies to state what is obvious to most people on the planet. It is because there is a growing number of people who entirely believe the world is flat.
They have come to these beliefs because they have isolated themselves on internet islands where everyone believes the same thing. The claims that they have been exposed to, have piled false fact on top of false fact, which paints a picture that is entirely believable to the flat-earther, but has no basis in reality.
So if you are a flat-earther seeking the truth, or you simply know some and want to give a credible scientific argument to refute their claims, then read on.
The Coriolis Misconceptions With Bart Simpson
Before we carry on, let us just briefly identify exactly what the Coriolis effect is and clear up any common misconceptions about this physical phenomena.
In 1995 the Fox Network broadcast an episode of the Simpsons called Bart v Australia, in the episode Bart gets an Australian boy to check which way the water flows down his toilet. The reason he does this is because Lisa alerts Bart to the Coriolis effect, which describes (amongst other things) how water flows when it is being drained.
Put simply, water that has been Coriolis effected will flow counterclockwise when it is being drained in the Northern hemisphere, and clockwise when being drained in the Southern hemisphere (and straight down on the equator).
Even though the effect is very real, the Simpsons (probably for reasons of dramatic storytelling) slightly misrepresented the phenomena and therefore sparked lots of misguided debate about the effect, a lot of which has been pounced on by the Flat Earth Society.
Toilets have jets which enable them to flush, they also have specific designs, these two major factors can have implications on how the water flows down your toilet. Even with sinks where no jets are present, there can be other contributing factors like the design of sink and nature of drain pipes leading away from the sink, plus there will always be some rotation in a body of water in a sink.
The only way to properly observe water that has been Coriolis effected is to set up a very carefully controlled experiment, one which we shall talk about in the next section.
The Coriolis Experiment
The particular experiment I will detail, was done by 2 major youtubers, they are; Derek from Veritasium and Dustin from Smarter Every Day.
What you'll need:
1 paddling pool that can be drained from the bottom.
A flat surface
1 spirit level
Plastic piping (3 metres)
Food Colouring
1 Plane Ticket.
8 wooden planks
Hammer & Nails
Cordless Drill
Black Marker Pen
Preparation:
Use your spirit level to make sure that the surface you are going to use is flat, use the wooden planks to create the base to a raised platform.
Next nail the chipboard to your frame, once you have checked again that the whole structure is flat, if not, prop up accordingly with chips of wood and/or stone.
Drill a hole through the centre of the board, for the piping.
Next place the pool on the platform and attach the piping to the bottom of the pool.
Fill the pool, if you are in the Northern hemisphere fill the pool in a clockwise motion, which is the opposite way you expect the water to drain, this ensures that filling does not effect the final result..
Leave the pool to settle so that there is no rotational motion on the pool, place a matchstick or similar on the surface of the pool to test that it is still.
Once the water is still place drops of the food colouring at the four cardinal points of the pool, giving a north/south/east/west cross. Again if you are in the Northern hemisphere place the drops in a clockwise motion, doing the opposite if you are in the Southern hemisphere.
Open the tap on the piping and drain the pool and observe.
Next fly to the opposite hemisphere and repeat, failing that contact somebody living in the opposite hemisphere and get them to do the experiment and report the results back to you.
Proof Analysis
So why does this prove the earth is round? The first part of the experiment proves that the earth is spinning, as the reason we get the effect is as the pool rotates with the earth, the outer edges of the water have further to travel than the inner areas.
Thus when we start to drain the pool we get a lag between how fast the outer and inner water is moving, this causes some water to get ahead of the drain and some to lag behind, creating a spinning effect.
When we do the experiment in the opposite hemisphere, it proves that the earth is spinning in the opposite direction. This of course cannot be possible on a flat earth model, we all spin one way, or not at all.
If the earth is spinning one way in London, and the opposite way in Sydney, then this proves that the world is round.
It is not only on draining water that we see the Coriolis force effects, we see it in the weather too. In the Southern hemisphere cyclones rotate clockwise and storms in the north spin counterclockwise. Again, clear proof that the earth is round.
If you are a flat-earther, I urge you to do these experiments for yourself; this will help you understand the nature of our world a lot better than this article or any video on youtube can.
Once you have proved to yourself that the world is not flat, you don't even have to declare it, just quietly move away from your previously held misconceptions and move on with your life.
The flat earth conspiracy theory is a false flag to convince that people who are "conspiracy theorists" are stupid.
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And it is working incredibly well! :-D
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Haha, really well @uvas :-D
Cg
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Hmmm, so you're telling me that @builderofcastles works for them?
Lolz, if that's the case then "they" aren't much kop.
Cg
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Yay you did it! Proved it once and for all.
Early in your post you asked if we are wondering why you are using your energy to discuss this subject. I found myself thinking about this more than most other parts of your post and I think your exploration here is about much more than the subject of flat-earth vs round ......or at least for me it is.
The packaging of an idea can be very compelling and we live in a time when so many people just take information at face value and skim over the verification of it. I believe this is why the current US president was voted in - he just espouses whatever garbage he wants to and creates fiction after fiction and calls everyone else a liar and simply because he says this , a surprising number of people believe it! I for one, question every single thing that comes out of his mouth because he's always been known for his lies and crooked dealings. I've always done this within politics but this administration sets a new standard of idiocy.
Anyway, I digress...my point is simply that your point about internet islands and group-mind dynamics is OF THE ESSENCE these days, so thank you!!
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This sadly is the case, and like you say the current US administration is like a living embodiment of this. Unfortunately the more information we create, and the more we disseminate the problem just gets worse not better.
We can but try and be sane voices in a mad world! :-D
Cg
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@cryptogee Winds blow across the Earth from high-pressure systems to low-pressure systems. However, winds don’t travel in a straight line. The actual paths of winds—and of ocean currents, which are pushed by wind—are partly a result of the Coriolis effect. The Coriolis effect is named after Gustave Coriolis, the 19th-century French mathematician who first explained it.
The key to the Coriolis effect lies in the Earth’s rotation. The Earth rotates faster at the Equator than it does at the poles. This is because the Earth is wider at the Equator. A point on the Equator has farther to travel in a day.
Let’s pretend you’re standing at the Equator and you want to throw a ball to your friend in the middle of North America. If you throw the ball in a straight line, it will appear to land to the right of your friend because he’s moving slower and has not caught up.
Now let’s pretend you’re standing at the North Pole. When you throw the ball to your friend, it will again appear to land to the right of him. But this time, it’s because he’s moving faster than you are and has moved ahead of the ball.
This apparent deflection is the Coriolis effect. The wind is like the ball. It appears to bend to the right in the Northern Hemisphere. In the Southern Hemisphere, winds appear to bend to the left.
In the Northern Hemisphere, wind from high-pressure systems pass low-pressure systems on the right. This causes the system to swirl counter-clockwise. Low-pressure systems usually bring storms. This means that hurricanes and other storms swirl counter-clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere. In the Southern Hemisphere, storms swirl clockwise.
Fast-moving objects such as airplanes and rockets are influenced by the Coriolis effect. Pilots must take the Earth’s rotation into account when charting flights over long distances. This means most planes are not flown in straight lines, even if the airports are directly across the continent from each other. The line between Portland, Maine, and Portland, Oregon, for instance, is very long, and fairly straight. However, a plane flying from Portland, Oregon, could not fly in a straight line and land in Portland, Maine. Flying east, the Coriolis effect seems to bend to the right, in a southerly direction. If the Oregon pilot flew in a straight line, the plane would end up near New York or Pennsylvania.
Military aircraft and missile-control technology must calculate the Coriolis effect for similar reasons. The target of an air raid could be missed entirely, and innocent people and civilian structures could be damaged.
The Earth rotates fairly slowly, compared with other planets. The slow rotation of the Earth means the Coriolis effect is not strong enough to be seen in small movements, such as the draining of water in a bathtub.
Jupiter, on the other hand, has the fastest rotation in the solar system. On Jupiter, north-south winds are actually transformed into east-west winds, some traveling more than 610 kilometers per hour (380 miles per hour). The divisions between winds that blow mostly to the east and those that blow mostly to the west create clear horizontal divisions among the planet’s clouds. The boundary between these fast-moving winds can create strong, swirling storms, like the Great Red Spot.
Closer to home, you could observe the Coriolis effect if you and a friend stood on a rotating merry-go-round and threw a ball back and forth. To you and your friend, the ball’s path would appear to curve. Actually, the ball would be traveling in a straight line. You and your friend would be moving out of its path while it is in the air. A third person, standing on the ground near the merry-go-round, would be able to confirm that the ball travels in a straight line.
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why is flight time not affected by earth spin? it should take way less time going opposite the earth rotation, yet flight times do not reflect that. Please explain. also, what instrument in the cockpit of a plan handles the calculations for curvature of the earth? All horizon gauges are strait lines, and there appears to be no mathematics of compensation to support this supposition.
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Great post and video guys! I slogged through this issue a few years back and came to the conclusion that the earth is a spheroid.
I guess the only thing I would add to this is that it would probably be necessary to get a few other people to verify the results....Not because I need that but because it is the scientific method.....
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Thanks, I love those guys as well and had wanted to do a post around it for some time :-)
I think they put it in the description of the video on Youtube, this experiment was a copy of ones they did at MIT (and a corresponding opposite latitude) in the 1960s.
Why I like this video because it shows you don't have to be smart enough to go to MIT in order to recreate the experiment.
Cg
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I knew of this but it was great to see the explanation in the video as now I know exactly how it works! I love these posts man!
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Yeah I loved that video, also because it shows the scientific process as something that is easy to follow and accessible to all, not just boffins in white lab coats.
Thanks for your comments :-)
Cg
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Hi friend, very good !!!!!
You would help me with a vote in my Blog., Thanks !!! ;)
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Tv and movies have a lot of misconceptions to answer for. Countless times have i taken a dramatized account of something that i have watched as fact, only to learn later that it's untrue, not necessarily a lie just a scene that has been manipulated to generate a desired outcome or emotion. Nice post.
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Yes and I would add that the internet has exacerbated that, we live in a world of headlines and mountains of info, so it is easy to hear or read a headline and then repeat it as fact, without looking into it properly. This is why we have the scientific process, beautifully illustrated by the video I posted. :-)
Cg
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There is no experiment that will convince flat-earthers that the earth is a sphere. You could literally take them into space, show them it is one, fly them over and around the ice wall and they would still say it is flat in spite of what their eyes tell them. Even if they temporarily said "Okay, I give, it's round" they would later renege and say it was all just an elaborate scam and they had been hallucinating or hypnotized into seeing what they saw, which was all an elaborate simulation of reality by NASA.
They are like the religiously inspired planetary scientists of centuries ago who tried desperately to prove the earth was the center of the solar system with ever more complicated and hair brained schemes of interlocking spheres and shapes rotating in bizarre ways. In spite of all the evidence to the contrary or the incompleteness and impossibility of their schemes - they just wanted to believe.
But while we are on the topic of simple experiments people could do for themselves that no flat-earther will believe... Science tells us that the curvature of the earth is 7.98 inches per mile. So take a very long corridor in an airport - that is flat according to spirit levels at every point along its length, put a vertical post at each end and shine a laser beam from a point 1 inch above the ground on one end in a direction that is perfectly horizontal to the ground at that point. At the other end of the hallway it will hit the other post at 8.98 inches above the ground. Now re-point the laser to try and hit the far post 1 inch above the ground - you can't because the earth is curved and it always hits the ground before it reaches the other end - in fact, you can't even see the piece of the post that is one inch above the ground.
This effect is non-linear (the surface of the Earth is a curve not a straight line) but at a distance of 623 yards (530 meters) you get a 1-inch (2.54 centimeters) curvature effect. This is, of course, the exact same effect that makes ships disappear below the horizon but with the accuracy of a laser you can demonstrate it at much smaller distances. If you only want one millimeter of curvature even 113 meters will do - not more than the length of a (US) football pitch.
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Alas I fear you're right, the only thing we can hope is that the flat-earth opinion, and others like retreat to the minority boundaries of human thinking.
I like the experiment, I might do this myself actually! At first I though yeah but where do I get a laser? Then I remembered, oh yeah! Laser pens, that's the beauty isn't it? We can now perform experiments that only a few could do just decades ago. Hopefully with a greater access to the scientific process flat earthers and their ilk will educate themselves and thus consign their wrong thinking to oblivion.
Cg
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If they retreat to the minority boundaries won't they actually just fall off the edge? One can only hope :-)
Regarding the laser - I would recommend a high power laser - there are quite a few in the 20mw or more range that would easily reach a mile. I don't know if they have lenses collimated well enough to hold a beam < 7.95 inches at one mile though.
There are some with focusable lenses built in - here's a 100mw green laser like that which should do the trick. Just watch out, at that power it'll blind you in no time if you get the beam in your or anyone else's eye. A 50 or 30mw model might do just as well.
http://www.laserpointerpro.com/100mw-532nm-flashlight-style-adjust-focus-green-laser-pointer-pen-with-18650-battery-p-450.html
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Unfortunately, this is another spot where the facts are correct, but the theory is only one of many.
The Coriolis Effect is real. It is a fact that swirling winds turn one way on the north side of the equator and opposite on the south side.
That this is caused by the earth spinning is a theory.
Another theory is that the air is dragged along by the sun (flat earth and gravity)
Another theory is that the air is pushed along by the sun (aether, electric universe)
Another theory is that there is a jet stream configuration that causes it. (won't really know until something big happens that really changes the jet streams)
The direction that water swirls down a drain has much more to do with slight irregularities in the drain then the Coriolis Effect. Storms are large structures of wind/pressure formation. The effect only has to apply a little torque to get them to turn. Water swirling down a drain is much tinier and denser. The effect is almost negligible on the scale of the pool.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-somebody-finally-sett/
If the Coriolis effect actually effected drain swirl direction, we would have easily made a perpetual motion machine based on the effect.
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omg, I hope this platform doesn't get infested by flatheads...
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Me too, I hope the world doesn't either!
Cg
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If you are dogmatically unable to accept the unimaginable as a possibility, you guarantee to ensure you trap yourself within a box of lies. Throw away all that you know. Start from ZERO. use only your senses, observations, and eyes.
Take a video camera. Point it STRAIT UP. Record ALL NIGHT. Observe the stars move, then explain how we're floating on a ball racing through space, and the north star NEVER EVER MOVES. Also the stars don't move the way you would expect from a globe. Now, stop there, explain that away.. While you are at it, have a GOOD LOOK at the moon. I mean, open mind. It NEVER moves it's face. It doesn't rotate. How does that work?
Stop there. If you can observe your way out of that, you're ready for level 2.
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The North star does move, the moon does rotate which is why we see the same face all the time, it rotates at the same pace as us.
Now explain why the sun dips below the horizon, explain why on a flat plane you can't see the bottom of a structure. Explain how you can use trigonometry to measure both the distance of the sun and the moon.
Explain why you believe in this idiot theory . .
Cryptogee
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