The Coriolis Force, explained and debunked
would disrupt the flow of water in your tub get washed out over the 500-mile journey to the eye of the storm. The Coriolis force, however, always acts in the same direction over the entire journey, and thus accumulates. If we go back to the numbers, we find that the acceleration (4*pi*f*v), where v is now 20 miles per hour, is 0.0013 meters per second squared. Adding this up over one day, we find that the velocity due to the Coriolis force alone is over 200 miles per hour by day's end.
The reason bathtubs and hurricanes are so different is that a hurricane is much larger than a bathtub, and it takes a lot longer for water to move across the hurricane than across the bathtub.
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