Sunday, 13 May 2012

Centripetal and Centrifugal force

Consider a car moving in a circle as shown below.



The car together with everything in it will tend to continue in a straight line unless forced to take a different direction. This is in accordance with Newton's first law of motion (the law of inertia). It is because of inertia that all objects moving in a circular path experience a force pushing them away from the center of rotation. This force is called the centrifugal force. To keep the object moving in a circle, there must be an opposite force that is to say one towards the center called the centripetal force. For a car moving in a circle, the friction between the tyers and the road is the centripetal force and without friction the car would be unable to move in the circle. Hope that was helpful