Does the atmosphere turn with you?
You can be sure that the atmosphere will turn with it, otherwise a stay on earth would hardly be possible. You yourself move with the surface of the planet, even if you jump in the air. With a few thoughts, you can easily make this clear to yourself.
Considerations for the effect of a standing atmosphere
- Passengers in a free-flight balloon are not exposed to any wind, even if it is moved in the air on a windy day. If you have not already experienced this phenomenon yourself, watch the people in the balloon basket with binoculars on a windy day. You will see that neither the hair nor the clothes are moved by the wind. The balloon is driven by the wind, it moves at the speed of the wind. So the wind has no speed relative to the balloon. This shows that you can only perceive air movement when the air is moving at a different speed than you are.
- Now keep in mind that the ground on which you are standing is moving. The earth rotates once every 24 hours on its own axis. This means that at the equator the speed is 40,000 km / 24 h = 1,666 km / h = 462 m / s. Even if you are on earth in Europe, the speed of the earth is still 800 km / h or 800 km / h. 230 m / s. Assuming the air stood still while you were moving at this speed, it would be like a headwind at that speed. The hurricane Wiebke, which on February 28 / March 1, 1990 over Germany roared away, had a top speed of 285 km / h and caused devastating damage. From this you can conclude that there would be no animals or plants on the surface of the earth if the atmosphere did not rotate.
Why the air turns with it
As is well known, air is not nothing, but a gas mixture; in this gas mixture there are many molecules that regularly collide with one another and also with the molecules of the earth.
- Since the earth rotates, the molecules of the earth always hit the gas molecules in the air from one direction. So these are driven in the direction of the earth.
- The near-earth molecules in turn hit the molecules that are further up in the atmosphere. In this way, these too are pushed in the direction of the earth's rotation. You can keep this in mind when you wave a newspaper violently and you solve it a draft that makes a candle flame flicker, for example, even at a distance.
- As a result of this permanent pushing of the air molecules in one direction, the entire atmosphere of the earth rotates with it. The winds that can be felt on earth have primarily nothing to do with the rotation of the earth, but this causes a deflection of existing winds. So it comes to the northeast trade wind in the northern hemisphere and the southeast trade wind in the southern hemisphere, because the winds blowing towards the equator are diverted.
Why do you not notice the rotation of the earth? - An understandable explanation
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