this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2023
423 points (95.5% liked)
Asklemmy
43394 readers
1456 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy π
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Centrifugal force does not exist
"A laughable claim, Mister Bond, perpetuated by overzealous teachers of science. Simply construct Newton's laws into a rotating system and you will see a centrifugal force term appear as plain as day." https://xkcd.com/123/
Do you seriously expect me to do this while strapped to a centrifuge?
It does, itβs just called a different thing. Centripetal force is exactly the same thing as what most people assume centrifugal force means.
I know I've had it explained a million times to me since I was a kid but... I still can't remember the difference between the two. I do, however, remember this little factoid about it.
I think centripetal force is whatever is pushing/pulling the object toward the center of rotation, such as the closed door of a car pushing on you while driving around a curve, where otherwise you would fly out of the car. Another example is the wheels of the car causing it to travel on a curve instead of straight. Or the rope of a tetherball for a pulling example.
In most cases (besides orbits in space) the force is question is actually the electromagnetic force, like any other case where objects made of atoms touch.
Personally I think it's weird to call that a specific force, especially by those who don't want to give centrifugal force a name - sure it's really just things "tending" to travel straight instead of following the curve, but no reason that can't have a special name, it's certainly intuitive enough.
It doesn't exist in an inertial frame of reference. In a non-inertial frame it's a perfectly valid force