Cod

Call me whatever you want, but I still cannot understand the whole concept of centrifugal force. I have a general idea of what it is from what people have told me (parents, friends, etc.), but I still don't understand how it works.

Take military helicopters for example. When they are flying at high speeds and they turn, the soldiers inside don't even move and they aren't strapped in (cept the window gunner). I just don't understand it....one bit.

So if someone could help me or provide links that could help me, I'd greatly appreciate it. All I want to do is understand it 100%.

contracycle

I'm not an expert but...

Centrifugal force as I understand it is a "pseudo force" rather than a real one.

Say the helicopter... as the helicopter turns left, say, the body swings out to the right. Now objects in the chopper were perviously moving forwards at a certain speed... now their direction of travel is being bent, and so they experience that energy as pressure holding them to the floor of the chopper, even though the floor is not pointing at the ground. They are still being dragged downwards by gravity as a sepearet force acting on them; their change in direction means they experience a sensation like acceleration.

Does that help?

Wyz_sub10

Basically, it's inertia being disturbed.

You are in a roller coaster going down. The cars hit the bottom and suddenly move upward.

Your body, however, was quite content to keep going down. Now that the car floor is making it go up (through "pushing" it), you're body feels the difference in "wants" (you going down vs. car going up).

That difference is pressing your body against the car floor. Even if the car was upside down, because your body still wants to go "down" (which is now up, because the car is upside down), it'll hug the car floor even though gravity is trying to pull you out from behind.

Normal

I just read about this, and the book said centrifugal force was based on the distant stars in the sky.

paul30

The word "centrifugal" means "fleeing from the center," and centrifugal force IS a pseudo force.

All objects tend to move in a straight line--that's inertia, Newton's first law.

When you are doing a "round the world" with your yoyo, the yoyo wants to fly off in a straight line tangent to the circle. It can't because of the string, which exerts a constant inward tug on the yoyo. If you cut the string as the yoyo is flying around, the yoyo will take off straight at a tangent.

The tug you feel on your string-finger is the force you have to exert to counteract the yoyo's tendency to fly off straight.

Clear?????

Undercurrent

Sound's like Mach's prinicple. My advice is to not worry about it until you completely understand just the mechanics of centrifugal force.

Shadowy Man

So.. uh, what's the actual question?

Mageth

The tug you feel on your string-finger is the force you have to exert to counteract the yoyo's tendency to fly off straight.

In the case of a yo-yo, the force applied by your finger/the string is referred to as the centripetal force, which may be defined as "the inward force on a body moving in a curved path around another body".

Centrifugal force is the "outward" force; centripetal force is the "inward" force. For example, gravity is the centripetal force that keeps an earth satellite (e.g. the moon) from flying off into space.

echidna

Yes to most of the above. If it helps I was always taught that it is more correctly described as the Centrifugal Effect than a force.

Taamalus

To first post

You asked for links
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/corf.html
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/cf.html

A simple start to finish explanation
http://www.glenbrook.k12.il.us/gbssc...les/u6l1a.html

for other things
http://www.glenbrook.k12.il.us/gbssc...ss/BBoard.html


To pseudo–force. What exactly does that mean? Or is this off-topic?