centrifugal force (redirected from centrifugal forces)

centrifugal force

Fictitious force, peculiar to circular motion, that is equal but opposite to the centripetal force that keeps a particle on a circular path (see centripetal acceleration). For example, a stone attached to a string and whirling in a horizontal circular path is accelerated toward the centre of its path by the tension in the string, the only force acting on the string. However, in a reference frame at rest with the stone, another force—the centrifugal force—must be introduced for Newton's laws of motion to apply. Centrifugal force is a useful concept in analyzing behaviour in rotating systems.

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centrifugal force

a fictitious force that can be thought of as acting outwards on any body that rotates or moves along a curved path

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Centrifugal force

A fictitious or pseudo outward force on a particle rotating about an axis which by Newton's third law is equal and opposite to the centripetal force. Like all such action-reaction pairs of forces, they are equal and opposite but do not act on the same body and so do not cancel each other. Consider a mass M tied by a string of length R to a pin at the center of a smooth horizontal table and whirling around the pin with an angular velocity of ω radians per second. The mass rotates in a circular path because of the centripetal force F_C = Mω²R which is exerted on the mass by the string. The reaction force exerted by the rotating mass M, the so-called centrifugal force, is Mω²R in a direction away from the center of rotation. See Centripetal force

From another point of view, consider an experimenter in a windowless, circular laboratory that is rotating smoothly about a centrally located vetical axis. No object remains at rest on a smooth surface; all such objects move outward toward the wall of the laboratory as though an outward, centrifugal force were acting. To the experimenter partaking in the rotation, in a rotating frame of reference, the centrifugal force is real. An outside observer would realize that the inward force which the experimenter in the rotating laboratory must exert to keep the object at rest does not keep it at rest, but furnishes the centripetal force required to keep the object moving in a circular path. The concept of an outward, centrifugal force explains the action of a centrifuge.