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On Centrifugal Force*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2016

E. G. Phillips
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What is centrifugal force? On selecting at random about a dozen elementary textbooks on Mechanics to find a definition, I was pleasantly surprised to discover (unless I have inadvertently missed it in any of them) that only four of them mention the name “centrifugal force”, and two only of these four mention “centripetal force” as well. No doubt if I had had easy access to textbooks written for and used by engineers, the results would have been different; but as I am concerned only about mathematical students, I have not troubled to pursue my search except in the kind of textbooks likely to be used in schools which teach elementary mechanics as a branch of mathematics.

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Type
Research Article
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The Mathematical Gazette , Volume 30 , Issue 288 , February 1946, pp. 17 - 18
Copyright
Copyright © Mathematical Association 1946 

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Footnotes

*

[Gazette, V, p. 28. Report of a conference on the correlation of the teaching of mathematics and science.

Mr. W J. Dobbs: “Some time ago I was told by a young man of some scientific training, who sneered at the mathematician as a sort of glorified two-foot rule, that the forces which act on a small body whirling in a circle at the end of a string are five in number, viz. its momentum and its kinetic energy, both acting in the direction of motion; inertia, acting in the opposite direction; the centrifugal force outwards from the centre; and the tension of the string towards the centre.”

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* [Gazette, V, p. 28. Report of a conference on the correlation of the teaching of mathematics and science.

Mr. W J. Dobbs: “Some time ago I was told by a young man of some scientific training, who sneered at the mathematician as a sort of glorified two-foot rule, that the forces which act on a small body whirling in a circle at the end of a string are five in number, viz. its momentum and its kinetic energy, both acting in the direction of motion; inertia, acting in the opposite direction; the centrifugal force outwards from the centre; and the tension of the string towards the centre.”