A couple of commenters expressed concern over the use of centrifugal force after my rant on the use of the word force. So, what is the deal with these two terms? Are they ok to use? Are they real ...

When humanity first started studying motion, circles posed a peculiar puzzle. Why do planets sweep endlessly around the Sun without flying off into the void of space? Why does a stone swung on a ...

If a body rotates around an axis other than the one at its own center of mass, it exerts an outward force upon anything that keeps it from going in a straight line. This is the definition ...

In this post, I am going to talk about real and not-real forces, like the fake centrifugal force. (If you don't like the word fake you could replace that with fictitious.) First, an example: Suppose ...

I first learned in high school physics about the myth of centrifugal force. On paper and in theory, it’s a very real force, one that pulls you away from something. The term comes up in the automotive ...

There are few experimental techniques that allow the study of force on biological molecules. Among them, optical or magnetic tweezers and atomic force microscopes (AFMs) have provided much insight ...