Hi just have a basic question. Just went to the local fair yesterday and road the Gravitron ride. The ride that sucks you to the walls. I became curious on the physics that cause you to get stuck to the wall so I have been researching centripetal force. Now it seems that the seats are exerting a force on me directly towards the center of a circle. I also understand that if hypothetically all of a sudden the walls disappeared on the ride I would move perpendicular to the force (tangental to the point on the circle). To me this makes little sense as I always thought I would move in a straight line directly in the opposite direction of the center of the circle. IF you have a force pushing you towards the center wouldn't that mean you would fly away from the center in a straight line assuming the walls suddenly disappeared. Please clarify this?
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Your momentum, at any given time, is in a straight line, in the straight-line direction you were spinning; this is the momentum that holds you against the wall, creating centripetal force.
The sense of being pressed straight outward is because the motion is curved; the correction to your momentum caused by the wall is in the direction of the center of the circle. If you draw a circle, and draw a line along one tangent (your momentum now), and then the next tangent (your momentum in a moment), the center of the angle between them is pointed directly at the center; this is the direction of force necessary to change the path to keep you in place.
