With a simple game of catch, I think I've found a way to show an effect that will have you doubting your very own eyes. Now they don't know it yet, but our budding ball players sitting on our specially rigged merry go round are about to demonstrate a rather astonishing optical illusion. Alright, here's the game, right?

You're gonna throw the ball straight, so what's your name, Victor, right? But this time, I'm gonna complicate things slightly, I'm gonna rotate the merry go round counter clockwise. So you throw it whilst it's moving. What's gonna happen? I don't know why, but I feel like if we're going fast enough, like, I might actually be the one catching the ball.

Okay, so you're gonna throw it and you're gonna catch it. All right. Yeah, I don't know. Right, what's gonna happen, dude? Oh, it's gonna veer off to the left. So the ball is gonna swerve off to the left. And you might catch it. Possibly. Okay, good. Right. What's going to happen? I think it's just going to come straight to me, and I'm going to catch it like the champion that I am.

Show me the catch. Okay, great. Right, okay. So everyone, no, hang on, one more. Spencer. He's not arrogant. Just quietly confident. He's not catching it. Really? No. So what's going to happen to the ball? I'm catching it. It's right here. Great. So we've got one saying it'll go off to you. One saying it'll come to you, Spencer.

And you think it goes straight ahead, but you think you'll be the one catching it. Yeah. Now remember, the ball will be thrown straight across the Spinning Merry Go Round, but where will it end up? Will it be caught by the thrower? Will it be caught by the person opposite? Will it be caught by the person to the thrower's left, or by the person to the thrower's right?

Right, in your own time, throw the ball, whoop! Oh! Whoa, whoa, whoa! Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! I told you it was gonna happen! So, the answer was D, it was caught by the person on the thrower's right. Our camera angles seem to show the ball bend in the air. So is that a camera effect or are we seeing what they saw?

Hang on, this couldn't get much more simple. The idea was just to throw the ball straight to Victor to show us his amazing catching skills. That's right. Yeah, it did. It just It just curved, just curved right over this way. So let me get this straight. So you threw, somehow, you threw the ball, it left your hands, and then what?

And then it just got sucked over to him. In the air? Yeah, and threw a perfect throw. What did you see? Yeah, it curved right in. Right, so we're all agreeing here, the ball curved in midair. Yes. And you didn't put, you didn't cheat this at all? No, I didn't. Okay, and do you know why it did that? No. No idea. It's called the Coriolis Effect.

And it's very simple. It's objects in motion appearing to be, it's an optical illusion, appearing to be deflected off their intended course. So what's actually happening here is you are throwing this ball. You can only throw a ball in a straight line. Can I clear that up straight away? Yes. Even though it appears in your eyes to be bending.

So you throw the ball straight. It's still going straight. But the table is moving below you. And all of a sudden Look who's in front of that straight moving ball. And it looks like it's bent off to the right, because you're still looking at the guy you were intending to throw it to. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the Coriolis effect.

Coriolis Force - The invisible force that appears to deflect the wind is the Coriolis force. The Coriolis force applies to movement on rotating objects. It is determined by the mass of the object and the object's rate of rotation. The Coriolis force is perpendicular to the object's axis. The Earth spins on its axis from west to east. The Coriolis force, therefore, acts in a north-south direction. The Coriolis force is zero at the Equator.

Though the Coriolis force is useful in mathematical equations, there is actually no physical force involved. Instead, it is just the ground moving at a different speed than an object in the air.

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