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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ross who wrote (58736)	1/12/2002 3:30:30 AM
From: Math Junkie	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

This notion that centrifugal force is fictitious ignores Newton's Third Law of Motion. If centrifugal force is fictitious, then what do you call the equal and opposite force that must exist to balance centripetal force? My physics text calls this "centrifugal force." Consider the case of a ball being swung around on a string. In order for the string to remain straight, there have to be equal and opposite forces on the two ends of the string, one on the inside end pulling toward the axis of rotation (centripetal force), and one on the outside end pulling away from the axis of rotation (centrifugal force). The centrifugal force is a reaction force resulting from the inertia of the ball, but that does not make it "fictitious." Nevertheless, I was incorrect in saying that centrifugal force could cause the tides, because in the theory described in the article, it would actually be the inertia of the water that was causing the tides. The centrifugal force would be the force that the water was exerting on the earth/moon system (through gravity), which would be a result of the inertia of the water.