The Cost of Frozen Frames

Why fictitious forces are real — and why that matters

Scope: Framework
Mode: Science (Σ-clean)
Primary Concept: Non-inertial frame correction

1. The Fiction Is Not the Effect

So-called fictitious forces are often dismissed as mathematical artifacts. This dismissal is misleading. The effects they describe are real. Only the interpretation is fictitious.

2. What a Frozen Frame Is

A frozen frame is one whose motion is ignored while describing a system. Rotation, acceleration, and drift are suppressed in the frame definition and reintroduced later as corrections.

3. The Emergence of Inertial Terms

When a frame accelerates, transported memory no longer aligns with the chosen coordinates. The mismatch appears as additional terms in the equations of motion.

a_observed = a_true − a_frame − 2Ω × v − Ω × (Ω × r)

These terms do not act on matter. They act on bookkeeping.

4. Why They Look Like Forces

Frozen frames require compensation to preserve conservation laws. The compensating terms are given force-like units and names, creating the illusion of agency.

5. The Coriolis Diagnostic

The Coriolis effect changes sign with frame reversal, vanishes in inertial frames, and scales with observer motion. No genuine cause behaves this way.

6. The Collapse of the Real / Fictitious Divide

If fictitious forces can move oceans, deflect projectiles, and shape weather, then “fictitious” describes only their origin, not their reality.

The category distinction survives only to protect force-first intuition.

7. The Inertia Encyclopedia Position

Non-inertial effects are frame memory made visible. Forces are the vocabulary chosen to hide frozen frames.

Unfreeze the frame, and the forces vanish.