Visually explore the effects of Coriolis and centrifugal acceleration.

Estimated Time: 45–60 minutes

Work through the Maple worksheet:

• Make sure you understand the default pictures.
• Try your own initial configurations. Compare different values of the angular velocity (including negative).
• Try to produce a boomerang, that is a configuration which returns to its

initial position as seen by the rotating observer.

• Try to mimic the animation you worked on earlier.

• Previous activity investigating particular examples.

• Computers with Maple

• Students may be confused about the role of the various parameters.
• Students may need to change the viewpoint of their Maple animation in order to obtain a picture which looks like their example from the previous activity.

• Have students discuss their attempts to model boomerangs (and possibly loops and right angles).
• Ask students to share their constructed model, and to discuss why it was chosen.

• Are there trajectories with multiple loops?
• Are there trajectories which loop forever?