RE: Flat earth any one?
If the Coriolis effect existed, it would be easy to build a device to pull energy from it. Since there is no such device working (and it has been tried), the Coriolis effect theory is incomplete, or is wrong.
I'll write up my thoughts on this at some point. This clearly deserves some more thinking. The answer that first springs to my mind: the reason the Coriolis effect isn't useful for power generation is that the forces are too small on useful scales, but I shouldn't make any bold claims about this until I have some calculations to back this up. If we could build a 1000-km-wide rotor, I suspect the Coriolis "forces" on it would be enormous. The same forces are minuscule on a 100-foot-wide rotor, and are easily overcome by friction and drag. I suspect.
But if you'd like to know more about the math behind the Coriolis effect, follow me and eventually you'll see my analysis pop up.
I would love to see any conclusions that come up. Any speculations too.
The coriolis effect may exist for storm sized things, and the bathroom sink thing is just an urban myth. And if so, then it would be hard to make something to measure it. It could also exist for the same strange reasons Jupiter has a red spot.
If the coriolis effect does work at a bathroom sink scale, then we should easily be able to measure the forces involved. And thus, one of my reasons for not believing in the theory.
The Coriolis Effect/Force is not a real force. It simply arises from having a coordinate frame that rotates. For the rotating frame of the earth, the effects are small, and only apparent over long distances (e.g. the Paris Gun and ballistic trajectories, the diameters of hurricanes, etc.). They can become more readily apparent if we obtain another coordinate frame that rotates on a small scale, such as a tilt-a-whirl, as demonstrated in this video: (vimeo . com/110882577).
Since the Coriolis effect isn't a real force, and is simply an effect of a rotating coordinate frame, no energy can be extracted from it.