Empirical Earth · Rotation & How We Measure It

Rivers on a spinning globe — they don’t flow uphill, and they don’t reverse

The claim

“On a spinning ball rivers would flow uphill, or reverse direction several times a day.”

What is measured

A river follows gravity to the sea, and a spinning planet carries water, bed and banks together, so rivers run one steady way, downhill, no matter which compass direction that is.

What would show this is wrong

any inland river, far from the tidal reach, observed to reverse its flow on a daily cycle, or any river found to climb in elevation along its course.

Sources

  1. Baer’s law (Baer–Babinet law). The tendency, attributed to the Earth’s rotation via the Coriolis force, for rivers to erode chiefly the right bank in the Northern Hemisphere and the left ban link
  2. Tidal bore. A tidal phenomenon in which the leading edge of an incoming tide forms a wave that travels up a river or narrow bay, reversing the direction of the current. Bores occur only wher link
  3. The Nile’s northward, downhill course. The Nile is the world’s longest river (~6,650 km), rising in the East African highlands and flowing north to the Mediterranean; its direction is set by link
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