I am a university educated (primarily sciences), middle aged dude and I still cannot understand the difference between these 2 forces / phenomena.
In: Physics
Imagine a ball on a string. If you start spinning it the string gets taut and the ball spins in a circle around you with its radius being the length of the string. What we call centrifugal force is the force that gets the string taut, like it’s pulling outwards. It’s not a real force because there isn’t really a force acting on the ball that pushes it outwards and gets the string taut. Rather it’s just a result of inertia and being connected to the string that makes it seem like something is pushing the ball outwards but really the ball is just trying to go straight and the string is preventing it.
The centripetal force is the string itself. It’s whatever is preventing a spinning body from flying off tangentially along it’s direction of travel and instead pulls it towards the center, thus forcing it to trace a circular path rather than a straight one.
So centrifugal force is the force pushing outwards on a spinning body and the centripetal force is the force that pulls it inwards, what’s essentially making it spin instead of going straight.
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