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A centripetal force (from Latin centrum, "center" and petere, "to seek" [1]) is a force that makes a body follow a curved path.The direction of the centripetal force is always orthogonal to the motion of the body and towards the fixed point of the instantaneous center of curvature of the path.
The net acceleration may be resolved into two components: tangential acceleration and centripetal acceleration. Unlike tangential acceleration, centripetal acceleration is present in both uniform and non-uniform circular motion. This diagram shows the normal force (n) pointing in other directions rather than opposite to the weight force.
Classical mechanics is the branch of physics used to describe the motion of macroscopic objects. [1] It is the most familiar of the theories of physics. The concepts it covers, such as mass, acceleration, and force, are commonly used and known. [2] The subject is based upon a three-dimensional Euclidean space with fixed axes, called a frame of ...
where b is the force acting on the body per unit mass (dimensions of acceleration, misleadingly called the "body force"), and dm = ρ dV is an infinitesimal mass element of the body. Body forces and contact forces acting on the body lead to corresponding moments ( torques ) of those forces relative to a given point.
There are two main descriptions of motion: dynamics and kinematics.Dynamics is general, since the momenta, forces and energy of the particles are taken into account. In this instance, sometimes the term dynamics refers to the differential equations that the system satisfies (e.g., Newton's second law or Euler–Lagrange equations), and sometimes to the solutions to those equations.
In physics, there are equations in every field to relate physical quantities to each other and perform calculations. Entire handbooks of equations can only summarize most of the full subject, else are highly specialized within a certain field. Physics is derived of formulae only.
According to this equation, the second force F 2 (r) is obtained by scaling the first force and changing its argument, as well as by adding inverse-square and inverse-cube central forces. For comparison, Newton's theorem of revolving orbits corresponds to the case a = 1 and b = 0 , so that r 1 = r 2 .
In particular, if Cartesian coordinates are chosen, the centrifugal force disappears, and the formulation involves only the central force itself, which provides the centripetal force for a curved motion. This viewpoint, that fictitious forces originate in the choice of coordinates, often is expressed by users of the Lagrangian method.