# Tag Info

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Summary Centrifugal force and Coriolis force exist only within a rotating frame of reference and their purpose is to "make Newtonian mechanics work" in such a reference. So your teacher is correct; according to Newtonian mechanics, centrifugal force truly doesn't exist. There is a reason why you can still define and use it, though. For this reason, your ...

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The trick is, centrifugal force is a fictitious force. Centrifugal force exists! To everyone denying it, do this to them: xkcd.com/123. However it is a fictitious force. To quote wikipedia: A fictitious force is an apparent force that acts on all masses whose motion is described using a non-inertial frame of reference, such as a rotating reference ...

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These are two different effects. Satellites don't fall down because they are moving on a circular orbit. Actually, they are falling down all the time, since circular motion is accelerated (though the velocity doesn't change absolute value, it changes direction!), so it is kind of "falling around the earth". The second question is, why doesn't an astronaut ...

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As I disagree with all the answers I am going to try to explain some of the fundamentals of science: Science in it's very essence can not explain why things happen the way they do, they simply try to model reality based on observations in the past to predict events in the future. In other words, defining a centrifugal force is possible as for example your ...

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Yes, angular momentum depends very much on the origin you pick. (You can see this most clearly by examining a single particle in free space with fixed velocity - the angular momentum is $0$ only if you pick the origin along the particle's line of movement.) It's true that linear momentum is independent of your choice of origin; however $\vec p$ is still ...

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The key to the conundrum is that for the purpose of explaining the apparent forces on someone to whom a rotating frame of reference appears to define stationary, for example all human beings everywhere, centrifugal force may need to be taken into consideration since it appears to be there. Although it may be small depending on the speed of rotation. Which is ...

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In Newtonian physics, objects continue moving in a straight line unless a force acts on them, therefore if an object is not moving in a straight line, a force must be acting on it. Consider planets. Why don't they just fly off into space on a straight line? Because the sun pulls them. Consider a rock at the end of a string. Why does it not fly off when ...

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Paraphrasing Douglas Adams, "Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss". This is pretty much how orbits work - you're actually falling all the time, but missing the body you're orbitting. The reason you're experiencing apparent weight-lessness is because every piece of your body is accelerated the same amount (if you could achieve the ...

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In the frame of the car it is not useful to talk about centripetal force. In the rotating frame, you have two forces: the centrifugal force, and the real force of the of the side of the car pushing against you as the centrifugal force accelerates you toward the outside. Note carefully that this force is not a reaction force to the centrifugal force. You ...

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Actually I think "Meaningful" or "Physically Meaningful" in many cases is as good as you're going to get, although the word can split up into finer meanings. If we think of mathematics as a language, then think of words that describe how well the description meets its intended purpose. Does the mathematical description evoke the "right" ideas? So words you ...

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Centrifugal force is force that pulls rotating object away from the center of rotation, Centrifugal is part of Newtonian mechanics and it's derived from Newton's Second law $$F=ma$$ Where $F$ is force in newtons, $m$ is mass of an object and $a$ is acceleration. In circular motion acceleration is $a=\frac{v^2}{r}$ and full equation for centrifugal force is ...

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As you move from an inertial frame to one non-inertial frame and then to another, you need to invoke various fictitious forces to continue to misapply Newton's Laws to situations where you can't use them. For example, a passenger in a car going around a curve to the left may choose to consider himself as a frame of reference, and explains his constant zero ...

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As said before, the answer is no(t always), but there is a simple law which can help you predict whether it will be the case or not, and how the torque is distributed across your solid*. Using simple algebra and $\times$ distributivity, one can easily prove that $$\vec{\tau}_{\vec{p}}=\vec{\tau}_{\vec{o}}+\vec{op}\times\vec{R}$$ where $\vec{R}$ is the ...

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