In article , says...

"Ned Simmons" wrote in message

"Brian Lawson" wrote in message

Hey Bob,

Maybe I read further in the article or some of the
links
than seems to
be what some here are talking about. The one factor
that
it stated
could account for the difference, was the centrifugal
force, which to
me is similar to the Coriolis effect.

Take care.

Brian Lawson,
Bothwell, Ontario

Problem here, there is no such thing as centrifugal
force.
Never was, is not
now and never will be................

Where did this ever start? Every mechanics book and ME
handbook on my bookshelf that I checked gives a definition
and formula for centrifugal force.

Resnick & Halliday
Marks
Beer & Johnston
Mabie & Reinholtz
Eshbach
Kent
Machinery's Handbook

Resnick & Halliday refers to centrifugal force as a
"pseudo-force", by which they mean it's a force due to
inertial effects, not that it doesn't exist. I wonder if
this is the source of the confusion?

Ned Simmons

No that's not the source of the 'confusion'. This is one of
my pet peeves
and every time I find another "reputable" reference book
this is the
first thing I look for in the index. They all have it wrong
no matter how
many times they repeat it. Try discussing this in any
college physics
class and see how far you get. Most people just blindly
believe what
they are told as the subject is too difficult to comprehend
and contrary
to what they experience when subjected to "cf'.

It's not all that difficult to understand. If you accept that
observations may only be made from an inertial frame of reference, and
that the only true forces are nuclear, electromagnetic, and
gravitational forces, centrifugal force *doesn't* exist. It seems that
physicists are more likely to take this view than (more pragmatic)
engineers, though poking around the web a bit I found opinions from both
camps all over the map. At least one site I visited implied that this
controversy was relatively recent and said something to the effect that
though the physicists have been fighting the good fight for several
decades, the engineers just don't get it. Another physicist longed for
the good old days before the "new physics" began to question the
existence of cf.

One particularly striking argument I ran across in a couple anti-cf
sites is that *gravity* is a pseudo-force, apparently in response to the
fact that it's impossible to tell the difference between the effects of
gravity and cf in certain rotating frames.

All this leads me to believe this would make a good subject for a term
paper--in a philosophy or religion class. g

Back in 1966
at Mich
Tech in Houghton our instructor asked on the first day of
class how
many of us believed in cf. He then proceeded to explain
centripetal
force and stated that anyone referring to cf again in his
class would
receive a failing grade for not grasping the subject matter
at hand.
So don't look for an explanation of cf in those books, study
the subject
of physics yourself. I have several college level physics
books in my library
and none of them list centrifugal force in their indexes.

I did take at least 3 semesters of classical physics and engineering
mechanics in the early 70s and all my texts and all the engineering
references on my bookshelf that deal with the subject mention
centrifugal force, most with some mention of the frame of reference
issue. Perhaps this is a consequence of a bias towards engineering
references, but then I haven't been culling books based on the presence
of the word centrifugal in the index.

What is it about the concept of centrifugal force that peeves you so,
Phil? How do you feel about the "g-forces" one experiences as a result
of linear acceleration?

Ned Simmons