heedm, I could make 2 or 3 comments regarding your responses, but will focus on only one.
[quote]Centrifugal force is not a real force. You're talking physics, so use physics terminology. It may seem 'real' to you, but that's not what real force means.<hr></blockquote>
If the scientists cannot agree on the issue of whether the "centrifugal" force is real or not, why do I have to use the terminology of only one camp in the debate?
Einstein said in the theory of general relativity, that velocity is relative since there is no absolute fixed frame of reference for speed in the universe, so any frame of reference is relative and valid. This means that it's just as valid to say a car goes past a filling station as to say that a filling station goes past a car, since the filling station is also moving as the earth rotates on its axis and as it orbits around the sun.
So if I park my car on a road with the front end facing a 35,000kg truck traveling at 100km/h and it hits my car, what happens to my car? It seems fair to say that the force of the truck traveling down the road did the damage. But then there's Einstein, so we park the truck on the road and drive the car at 100km/h into the front end of the truck, and now what happens to the car? Did the inertia of the truck exert an "unreal" force on the front end of my car? I think not.
If there had been one of those Hollywood cardboard cutouts of Brittney Spears sitting stationary in the road and my car hit that instead of the truck at 100km/h, don't you think the results would have been different? My question is, what "force" bent the sheetmetal of my car when it hit the stationary truck with its inertia?
As a side note, doesn't "equilibrium" require the balance of 2 opposing forces? For an object to be in rotation at a constant speed and radius from a center in a centripetal/centrifugal system, it MUST be in a state of equilibrium. But an "equilibrium" between what 2 forces?
As I said in my previous post...BTW, the “centrifugal” force is real, and is nothing more than the inertia of an object resisting the purely “directional” acceleration of the “centripetal” force.
(edited for typos and additional clarity)
[ 31 December 2001: Message edited by: Flight Safety ]</p>