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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.
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. In non-uniform circular motion, the normal force does not always point to the opposite direction of weight.
Newton's law of motion for a particle of mass m written in vector form is: = , where F is the vector sum of the physical forces applied to the particle and a is the absolute acceleration (that is, acceleration in an inertial frame) of the particle, given by: = , where r is the position vector of the particle (not to be confused with radius, as ...
The same reasoning used with respect to the position of a particle to define velocity, can be applied to the velocity to define acceleration. The acceleration of a particle is the vector defined by the rate of change of the velocity vector. The average acceleration of a particle over a time interval is defined as the ratio.
An oscillating pendulum, with velocity and acceleration marked. It experiences both tangential and centripetal acceleration. Components of acceleration for a curved motion. The tangential component a t is due to the change in speed of traversal, and points along the curve in the direction of the velocity vector (or in the opposite direction).
Given a subset S of R n, a vector field is represented by a vector-valued function V: S → R n in standard Cartesian coordinates (x 1, …, x n). If each component of V is continuous, then V is a continuous vector field. It is common to focus on smooth vector fields, meaning that each component is a smooth function (differentiable any number ...
Transverse acceleration (perpendicular to velocity) causes a change in direction. If it is constant in magnitude and changing in direction with the velocity, circular motion ensues. Taking two derivatives of the particle's coordinates concerning time gives the centripetal acceleration
Upper panel: Ball on a banked circular track moving with constant speed ; Lower panel: Forces on the ball.The resultant or net force on the ball found by vector addition of the normal force exerted by the road and vertical force due to gravity must equal the required force for centripetal acceleration dictated by the need to travel a circular path.