Let us not stop centrifugal force

• Leonid Minkin ^[1]
  1. [1] Portland Community College

     Portland Community College

     Estados Unidos

     
• Localización: The Physics Teacher, ISSN 0031-921X, Vol. 62, Nº. 9, 2024, págs. 709-710
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • In his letter1 responding to two papers,2,3 C. H. Wörner emphasizes his pedagogical point regarding the concept of “centrifugal force.” He believes that elementary problems of mechanics can be solved in the inertial frame of reference. It is true. However, it is also true that many of them have simpler and more elegant solutions in non-inertial frames. Wörner explains Earth’s equatorial bulge relative to a model of rotation of a stone attached to a string. A slightly more complicated problem of a bead sliding along a rotating rod, subjected to elastic and friction forces, has a much simpler solution in the non-inertial frame of reference using centrifugal force.