Coriolis [WAS: Will thebe hanging fixtures in your Habitat h

> Coriolis is a facinating thing, that will make life on the High
> Fronteir interesting in new and challenging ways. Is there a unit of
> measurement for the Coriolis effect? There certainly should be. If
> I have weak bones, it's good to know if the habitat I'm visiting is
> 0.5 G or 1.5 G. It would be nice to know if it is 0.5 C (or whatever
> it would be called) or 1.5 C (or whatever it would be called).
The Coriolis force (pseudoforce) is given as -2m multiplied by the cross product of the vector of rotation and the velocity vector of the object moved. That is, an object moving parallel to the spin axis feels no Coriolis force - which intuitively makes sense, since the intuitive explanation of the Coriolis force is that when an object moves from a high-velocity region (far from the spin axis) to a low-velocity region (closer to the axis) or vice versa, it will feel a "tug" to accomodate it to the velocity of the new surroundings.
The magnitude of the Coriolis force on an object being moved vertically in a rotating habitat is then 2*m*v*w: 2 times the product of the object's mass, its velocity, and the angular velocity of the habitat measured in radians per second. Divide out the mass, and you get a Coriolis "acceleration", which for an Island One type habitat (with rotation rate = 2 RPM = 0.21 radians/second) is 0.42 multiplied by the velocity, in SI units.
So if you stand in an elevator car that rises by one meter per second, you will feel a sideways acceleration of 0.42 meters/square second, or about 4.3% of your weight at the 1 g level. If that elevator car goes all the way to the spin axis, the Coriolis force that you feel will remain constant, but since your weight will go down the Coriolis force will eventually dominate. If that elevator car simply passes the spin axis and descends on the other side, then as you pass the axis you will weigh 4% of your normal weight; and that weight will press you towards the wall of the elevator car. Then, of course, unless the elevator car is rotated, you will feel an increasing weight due to centrifugal force towards the original ceiling of the elevator car, but the Coriolis force will remain constant at 4% of your 1 g weight.
An Island Three type habitat rotates at a quarter of the rate of an Island One. Therefore the Coriolis force will also be a quarter as strong.
Now, if you rise from a chair, what is the upward speed of your torso? A rough estimate is this: my thighs, from knees to pelvis, are about 45 cm long. The chair that I'm sitting on right now is tall enough that my knees are bent at roughly right angles; therefore, when I stand up from it, my torso moves 45 centimeters vertically. I estimate that I can easily stand up from this chair in half a second, if I'm in a hurry.
That means that my torso moves with a mean vertical speed of roughly a meter per second.
So if my house were located at the 1 g level of an Island One, I would experience a sideways tug upon my upper body of about 4% of my weight. How much my upper body weighs, from pelvis and up (neglecting the Coriolis force upon my thighs), I don't know, but let's say 70 kg or not much less.
So the Coriolis force that I would experience would be like to someone pushing me with a force equivalent roughly to 3 kg, or six pounds. The weight of three cartons of milk. Noticeable, but not enough to make me tumble across the room unless I were dead drunk.

If we want to make a unit for the Coriolis force, we must specify what vertical velocity this Coriolis force is calculated for. One meter per second would be a good choice, both to simplify calculations and because this speed lies right in the range of vertical speeds that inhabitants would be likely to experience: the characteristic Coriolis force in a habitat is specified as the pseudoforce exerted upon an object being moved vertically at a meter per second. Since the Coriolis force scales linearly with the mass of the object, like centrifugal force and gravity, we can easily subtract the mass out and get the Coriolis acceleration, just as we have the centrifugal acceleration, and we can compare the Coriolis acceleration with the standard 1 g. Thus, an Island One space habitat has a Coriolis force of 0.042 m/s^2, or about 4% gee. An Island Three has 1% Coriolis; a small habitat of a quarter of Island One's radius spun up to one gee has 16% Coriolis.

> Also, does it act the same on objects of different mass, like
> gravity does? I mean, if I drop a 10 Kg object from ten metres, and
> it is displaced 1 metre while falling, would a 100 Kg object dropped
> from the same hight in the same habitat also be displace 1 metre?
S.

Jon Lennart Beck.