And why do they spin in the first place? The answer is a phenomenon called the Coriolis effect. NARRATOR: If you've ever watched the news during a hurricane or wintertime nor'easter, you've ...

This one takes some explanation, and it's okay if it doesn't make sense at first. We'll be covering some basic physics principles to answer this week's question. First, picture this. The Earth, of ...

It does. The three ingredients needed for hurricane formation are warm oceans, light winds aloft and a sufficiently strong Coriolis effect, an apparent deflective force caused by the Earth’s ...

So there is indeed a Coriolis effect, and we see it on grand scales -- hurricanes in different hemispheres tend to rotate in different directions, because the underlying Earth is spinning ...