Why does the earth rotate in a clockwise direction: why not anticlockwise?
First of all, I will like to point out that in actual fact the West to East rotation of the earth would appear to be anti-clockwise when viewed from top of the North pole and clockwise when viewed sitting on the South pole. (You might be able to check it by looking at a rotating ball from the top and then from the bottom). You may still ask why it is not the other way around. There is no law that it has to be only the way it is. It just happened that in the formation of the sun and the earth the rotation of the initial dust cloud happened to be so. The angular momentum of the cloud was so directed. There is nothing very deep in this happening. We can balance a two-wheeler while riding. But we are unable to do so when it is not moving. Why? If we push a standing bicycle with a great force it can go quite some distance before it topples. It acquires a degree of stability because of the angular momentum of the rotating wheels. The need for conservation of angular momentum gives the bicycl
