Snipers Calculate Even Earth’s Rotation

When they want to hit their targets, snipers can move to a position that will not reveal themselves, detect their target, wind, humidity, temperature, air pressure, gravity and even world turn They need to take into account many variables that can affect the flight of a projectile, such as

Yes, you read it right: Snipers; before they hit their target, the rotation of the Earth depends on the bullet they will fire. what effect it will exert while in the air They also have to calculate.

This is called the Coriolis effect, and it’s something snipers need to pay close attention to when shooting.

Named after the French mathematician and engineer Gaspard-Gustave de Coriolis in 1835. Coriolis effectaround its axis Earth rotating from west to east It is characterized as a form of inertial force resulting from rotational motion. Because of this force, every object moving on or near the Earth’s surface has to deviate slightly from its course due to the planet’s rotation.

The direction and magnitude of the deviation depend on two factors: the latitude And speed of the object. Coriolis effect, latitude 90 degrees near the poles is largerlatitude 0 degrees zero at the equator falls. This effect is also directly proportional to the speed of the object. The faster the object moves, the greater the deflection.

This annoying situation also causes objects moving in a straight line to deviate from their routes in different ways depending on which hemisphere they are in. For example in the northern hemisphere objects in the direction they aim to the right; in the southern hemisphere whereas to your left they turn right.

So how does this Coriolis force affect snipers?

In short, since bullets are also objects moving on our earth, the Coriolis effect occurs while flying in the air. targeted causes them to deviate from their orbits. The longer the flight distance and duration of a bullet, the more pronounced the deviation becomes.

For example, suppose a sniper at 51.5 degrees north latitude wants to hit a target 914 meters away with a projectile traveling at 500 km/h. When the Coriolis effect is calculated, this bullet is due to the Earth’s rotation. will deviate about 7.5 centimeters to the right. In addition, since gravity pulls the projectile down as it flies, the sniper will have to aim higher or lower depending on whether he’s facing east or west.

To give another example, a projectile fired from a distance of 1,000 meters in the north direction at 45 degrees latitude is approximately at the point where it would normally hit due to the Coriolis force. Hits 2.5 centimeters to the right. If the same bullet is fired in the east direction, it will hit approximately 7.5 centimeters lower than expected.

As you can see, the Coriolis force also affects the vertical component of a bullet’s trajectory due to gravity. fall more or less than expected why could it be. This is because as a projectile travels long distances, it approaches or moves away from the Earth’s center of mass, changing its potential energy and therefore its kinetic energy.

(This effect is known as the Eötvös effect, named after the Hungarian physicist Loránd Eötvös who worked on it in 1908. The Eötvös effect is the opposite of the horizontal component of the Coriolis force: it causes a projectile fired eastward to drop less than expected, and a projectile fired westward to drop more than expected. But that’s the subject of another article…)

How do snipers account for the Coriolis force before shooting?

Snipers need to consider both components of the Coriolis force when aiming at long distances or high latitudes. This muzzle velocity, bullet weight, coefficient of friction, wind speed and direction, air density and temperature, elevation angle, latitude and azimuth (angle between north and shooting direction) using ballistic tables or calculators that take into account various factors such as

Even some modern rifles use these factors. able to automatically calculate It even has built-in systems. These tools help snipers estimate how much they need to adjust their aiming point to compensate for Coriolis force and other effects.

In fact, if you are into games, this is a game that you definitely come across and love. On a Call of Duty missione is also explained. In ‘All Ghillied Up’, where we play the young Captain Price and assassinate Captain MacMillan and Zakhaev with a sniper rifle, we are asked to take into account the Coriolis effect.

Understanding how the Coriolis effect affects snipers allows us to understand how specialized this is. However, although we have explained this physics phenomenon through snipers, we It sheds light on our world too. Thanks to the Coriolis force formula, we can also calculate hurricanes, ocean currents and weather conditions.