the.com/centrifugal force
The outward push you feel when inertia gets blamed for your car's bad turn.
means The apparent outward force that seems to push a rotating or turning object away from the center, when really it's just the object's inertia resisting the inward pull that's making it turn.
from Coined from Latin centrum (center) and fugere (to flee) — literally 'center-fleeing.' Isaac Newton used the term in the 1680s in the Principia, pairing it with 'centripetal' (center-seeking) from centrum and petere (to seek). The physics irony baked into the name: in an inertial frame there's no real outward force at all — it's a fictitious force that only appears when you insist on viewing things from inside the spinning frame.
- not real
- It is inertia resisting curved motion, not an actual force
- the real one
- Centripetal force actually pulls you toward the center
- reference frame trick
- Only appears in rotating frames, vanishes in inertial ones
- washing machines
- Spin cycles use it to fling water out of clothes