Earth Hockey

The following animations show the result of shooting a hockey puck on a perfectly round, frictionless, rotating Earth. The black line gives the great circle path the puck would follow if the Earth were not rotating, the blue line gives the great circle it actually follows, and the red line shows the apparent path as seen from the Earth. Click on the picture to start the animation.
Animation
South from the North Pole
 Animation
North to London
 Animation
Chicago at rest
Animation
Vancouver to London
 Animation
East from Vancouver
 Animation
West from Chicago

The frames in these animations were created using Mathematica code written by David McIntyre.
The code is ©1999 David McIntyre; this page is ©1999 Tevian Dray.

Some further pictures due to David McIntyre, including alternative versions of several of the ones above, can be found here.