Centrifugal Force
This didn’t make the FT list of unexplained phenomena on the spurious grounds that it is easily explained. THIS IS NONSENSE. Rarely will you get a scientist to explain it, they will try to fob you off saying that it just does not exist – which is obviously a lie. They are involved in a gigantic cover up on a scale unheard of since the great “there’s a floating gyroscope in my garage” incident of 1952.
Centrifugal force as portrayed in all good “science is fun (ages 7 to 10)” books is what keeps toy soldiers (or lego people) standing on a foil pie-case when swung around your head in a model of a space ship. But how does it happen? Normally the soldier will just slide off the pie case when you tip it up 90°? Centrifugal force must be a form of FRICTION – another unexplained phenomena!
(There really is a great deal that science fails to explain. Like cork floating. There are some things we, with our small animal perspective on the universe, are not meant to understand, and we should be more humble in the face of the infinite/numinous and know our place is not to pretend at even wanting to understand. Ever.)
If you ever get a scientist to expand on the initial “go away, there’s no such thing” lie, they will start to bleat on about “centripetal” force. This is clearly just the same thing – they’ve even copied the name, but with a slightly different ending! It’s so transparent a ploy that a child can spot it. I did – and I was just 7. Anyway, “centripetal” (ha) force they will say is “what keeps things going in a circle” blah blah (they will never get round to the important toy soldier/pie case thing) and it is equal and opposite to the centrifugal force because “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction” SO… IT DOES EXIST!
How can centripetal force exist if it is equal and opposite to centrifugal force which you say does not exist!!! eh?
So where does centrifugal force come from? Well some say it comes from the edges of the universe – this is known as Mach’s Principle – and others say it is just very very clever. We may never really know more about this mysterious force.
what the heck is this rubbish, i went and googled more about a centrifugal force, and the ways this article attempts to explain this are what i would expect from kindergarten.
bodies simply try and move in a straight line, when driving in a car, we think we get pulled when turning in a roundabout, but basically, there is just a lack of restraints keeping us attached in the car to move with it, so we just move in a straight line, at a tangent.
You’ve got to be kidding, right? Cetripetal force is spelled differently because IT’S A DIFFERENT WORD. It is derived from Latin, and means “Center Seeking,” a.k.a. the force that accelerates an object in a circular path towards the center of the circle. Oh, and by the way, if there was a cetrifugal force that was equal and opposite to the cetripetal force, (which is required for circular motion), the object would stay in a stright line, its net force in all directions equal to zero.
And I really hope you don’t mean it when you say friction is an unexplained phenomenon. Though admittedly, it has nothing to do with this discussion. The thing that keeps the “all-important toy soldier” in the pie plate is called inertia. Maybe a seven year old hasn’t heard of that yet, though. Conveniently for the toy soldier, there happens to be a pie plate (which you happen to be spinning around using a cetripetal force called YOUR ARM)in the way of its stright line path, along which it would travel if there was nothing to stop it, (the CENTRIPETAL force of the pie plate).
ok but i bet you can’t explain how cork floats
We’ve known how cork floats since cork cells were examined by Hooke in the 1600′s. Water molecules are too big to move through the cell wall of the cork, leaving only air inside, giving cork buoyancy.
Now, to Coop. Your said that if centrifugal force existed as the equal and opposite force to centripetal force, the object would move in a straight line, not in a circle. The truth is, the object DOES move in a straight line.
Let’s say an object is attached to a 10 mm string and is moving around a fixed position at 25 m/s. The velocity is in a straight line, but the string, which is a fixed 10 mm, can’t expand to accommodate the object moving in a straight line. Instead, it will move around the object. However, one can prove the velocity is tangential, because if the string were to disappear while the object were still in motion, the object would fly forward in a straight line. Centrifugal force exists.
Casey @ 4: (An old physics teacher writes) Newton’s First Law of Motion states “A body remains at rest or in uniform motion in a straight line unless acted on by a force” You acknowledge, correctly, that in the absence of the tension of the string causing an acceleration towards the centre of its circular motion the object will fly forward in a straight line at a tangent to the circle. If its speed in this direction is constant, then no force can be acting on it. (Of course, in reality neither its speed nor its direction will remain constant because the object is acted on by air resistance and gravity, but they have nothing to do with the question.)
CENTRIFUGAL FORCE IS INERTIA YOU BLUBBERING IDIOT!
still very silent on how cork floats. VERY CONVENIENT!!!!