I am a university educated (primarily sciences), middle aged dude and I still cannot understand the difference between these 2 forces / phenomena.
In: Physics
The literal definition difference, from the words themselves, is “toward center” versus “away from center”.
But in practice they’re exactly the same force, with the direction flipping depending on what you choose as your frame of reference.
Picture a car making a 90 degree turn on some street intersection, turning in a quarter circle arc around an imaginary center point.
If you lay out your math model as “the world is stationary while the car moves” then the force is centri**petal** force – a force to the side of the car aimed at that center point of the circular arc pulls the car around the circular path.
If you lay out your math model as “the car is stationary as the world moves past its windows” then the force is centri**fugal** force – a force pulling the car and the things in it (the people) toward the outside of the circle, away from its center.
They’re the same thing, but the direction “feels” different depending on if you are standing outside the car looking at it drive past versus if you are inside the car looking out at the world around you.
In most situations the simpler math happens when you set up the model with the world being stationary with the car moving through it, which is why when learning the physics of it you will encounter the term “centripetal” much more often.
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