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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.
This reaction force is sometimes described as a centrifugal inertial reaction, [44] [45] that is, a force that is centrifugally directed, which is a reactive force equal and opposite to the centripetal force that is curving the path of the mass. The concept of the reactive centrifugal force is sometimes used in mechanics and engineering.
Since the centrifugal force of the parts of the earth, arising from the earth's diurnal motion, which is to the force of gravity as 1 to 289, raises the waters under the equator to a height exceeding that under the poles by 85472 Paris feet, as above, in Prop. XIX., the force of the sun, which we have now shewed to be to the force of gravity as ...
[note 9] The force required to sustain this acceleration, called the centripetal force, is therefore also directed toward the center of the circle and has magnitude /. Many orbits, such as that of the Moon around the Earth, can be approximated by uniform circular motion.
The normal force is actually the sum of the radial and tangential forces. The component of weight force is responsible for the tangential force (when we neglect friction). The centripetal force is due to the change in the direction of velocity. The normal force and weight may also point in the same direction.
Centripetal force causes the acceleration measured on the rotating surface of the Earth to differ from the acceleration that is measured for a free-falling body: the apparent acceleration in the rotating frame of reference is the total gravity vector minus a small vector toward the north–south axis of the Earth, corresponding to staying ...
More generally, the net force that accelerates an object can be resolved into a component that is perpendicular to the path, and one that is tangential to the path. This yields both the tangential force, which accelerates the object by either slowing it down or speeding it up, and the radial (centripetal) force, which changes its direction.
The "reactive centrifugal force" discussed in this article is not the same thing as the centrifugal pseudoforce, which is usually what is meant by the term "centrifugal force". Reactive centrifugal force, being one-half of the reaction pair together with centripetal force, is a concept which applies in any reference frame.