Dave, you're right, this does appear to be an almost private conversation.
Physics text books will say don't use centrifugal force because it's not a real force. They're totally right. There is no mechanism for the force, no work done, no energy expended, it is only felt by someone in a non-inertial reference frame.
That's all nice to talk about, but go to the fair grounds and ride the sizzler, then tell me there's no such thing as centrifugal force.
If we sit on the rotor blade in flight (unholy rigid?) and forget that the blade that we're sitting on is spinning, then we feel it swinging like a pendulum with a restoring force acting away from the hub. The only appropriate term for that force is centrifugal force.
If we looked at the same thing on the ground, then we can't feel or see a centrifugal force. We see a moving blade that keeps getting pulled to the rotor hub and having it's direction changed. That force that pulls it to the hub is the centripetal force. The centripetal force doesn't work as a restoring force.
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I guess we have different dictionaries. The basic definition of precession in the one I use is, "the regular motion of a spinning body such as a spinning top or a planet, in which the axis of rotation sweeps out a cone".
Nit-picking is okay. Truth is in the details. Drive for show, putt for dough.
Matthew.
[ 27 November 2001: Message edited by: heedm ]