Centrifugal force
Type of inertial force / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Centrifugal force is an inertial force in Newtonian mechanics (also called a "fictitious" or "pseudo" force) that appears to act on all objects when viewed in a rotating frame of reference. It is directed radially away from the axis of rotation. The magnitude of centrifugal force F on an object of mass m at the distance r from the axis of rotation of a frame of reference rotating with angular velocity ω is:
This fictitious force is often applied to rotating devices, such as centrifuges, centrifugal pumps, centrifugal governors, and centrifugal clutches, and in centrifugal railways, planetary orbits and banked curves, when they are analyzed in a non–inertial reference frame such as a rotating coordinate system.
Confusingly, the term has sometimes also been used for the reactive centrifugal force, a real frame-independent Newtonian force that exists as a reaction to a centripetal force.