Coriolis Deflection Estimator

Inspectable records

Ledger state

The current ledger marks this instrument verified clean within the source-bound verification corpus.

Area

Earth & Space (astronomy, orbital mechanics, meteorology, geology, geodesy, oceanography)

Tranche

tranche-5

Evidence ID

t5-151

Ledger rows

1

No ledger note is attached.

Review findings

The magnitude formula is standard for the horizontal Coriolis acceleration under the stated assumptions, but the specification is incomplete and ambiguous about angle units, velocity bearing, vector direction, and the meaning of deflection. Resolve those points before labeling the instrument as a deflection estimator.

Formula and scope findings

• a_cor = 2Ω·v·sin(φ) is the magnitude of the horizontal Coriolis acceleration only when v is horizontal speed relative to the rotating Earth; it is not a complete vector formula.
• The claimed deflection direction is not computed by the supplied formula. Direction also requires the velocity bearing: in the Northern Hemisphere the acceleration is to the right of motion, and in the Southern Hemisphere it is to the left.
• The specification says it computes deflection, but no time interval, trajectory model, or displacement formula is provided, so deflection distance cannot be calculated.
• The phrase "direction (hemisphere)" is ambiguous: hemisphere determines right-versus-left only after the motion direction and coordinate convention are specified.

Unit assumptions

• Ω is Earth's sidereal angular velocity, Ω = 7.2921159 × 10^-5 rad/s; radians are dimensionless in the acceleration calculation.
• Velocity v is horizontal ground-relative speed in m/s.
• Latitude φ is interpreted in degrees at the input interface and converted to radians before evaluating sin(φ).
• The formula returns acceleration in m/s².
• Direction examples assume motion is northward and use the meteorological convention: right of motion in the Northern Hemisphere and left of motion in the Southern Hemisphere.

Boundary hardening

BREAK_CLAIMED · SELF_FLAGGED

The scalar formula can compute a magnitude or signed latitude-dependent scalar, but it cannot uniquely compute a physical deflection direction without an explicit velocity-bearing convention. The instrument must also suppress hemisphere direction labels when velocity is exactly zero and handle extreme finite inputs without overflow.

Errata and corrections

No applied erratum is attached to this unique-name record.

Inspectable example

4 review vectors are recorded. One source-bound sample is shown below.

{
  "inputs": {
    "latitude_deg": 45,
    "velocity_m_per_s": 10,
    "velocity_direction": "northward"
  },
  "expected_outputs": {
    "coriolis_acceleration_m_per_s2": 0.0010312609,
    "deflection_direction": "right of motion (eastward)"
  },
  "working": "2Ω = 2 × 0.000072921159 = 0.000145842318 s^-1. sin(45°) = 0.70710678. a_cor = 0.000145842318 × 10 × 0.70710678 = 0.0010312609 m/s². Latitude is positive, so a northward-moving object is deflected right, toward east."
}

Related workflows

No source-defined multi-instrument workflow membership is recorded.

Sources and evidence

These pointers bind the page to evidence. They do not grant authority or collapse verification into deployment.

• VERIFIED_LEDGER.json · VERIFIED_CLEAN
• evidence-tranche5/tranche5-results.json
• BOUNDARY_HAZARD_CATALOG.json