Eli5: How does centripetal force work?
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“Centripetal force” just means any force that happens to be causing an object to move along a more-or-less circular path by pulling that object toward the center of the circle. It’s not a *type* of force, it’s just a *direction* in which any type of force can pull.
In the case of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun, the centripetal force acting on the Earth is the Sun’s gravity. If you put a bucket on a rope and then spin it around in a circle, the centripetal force acting on the bucket is the tension from the rope that’s pulling on it. If you put water in the bucket, the centripetal force acting on the water is the force being applied to it by the bottom of the bucket. etc.
These different forces don’t really have much in common with one another than the direction in which they are pulling. If you want to understand one of them, you should ask about it individually (e.g. “Eli5: How does gravitational force work?”).
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