Why Flat Earthers Would Make Poor Artillerymen
Don’t Forget To Calculate The Rotation of the Earth
If you’ve ever had the privilege to read an artillery manual, you might stumble across something interesting. In the various tables and equations that appear in such booklets, there is one factor that most people don’t often think about in their day-to-day lives — the Earth is constantly spinning. Many tables detailing the factors that could play a role in artillery accuracy and projectile calculations include warnings about remembering to factor in the rotation of the Earth before firing. This is especially true for long-range artillery. The further a shell has to travel, the larger the impact of Earth’s rotation becomes.
Artillerymen have to take into account things like wind speed, air pressure, and weather before firing. They also have to remember that the Earth is in constant motion. When a shell is suspended in the air during its flight, the ground below it is rotating away from it at a constant speed.
This is known as the Coriolis force or the Coriolis effect. It has large scale implications for things like weather (with the formation of hurricanes and typhoons) but it can also affect small things like artillery shells or even a sniper’s bullet.
