That's because its direction is constantly changing to point to the center of the circular path — a condition that's defined as centripetal acceleration, as expressed in the equation here.

For me, I say that if the force is essentially one of the 4 fundamental forces then it is "real". With this definition, centripetal force would be real and centrifugal not real.

In thinking about centripetal forces, I realized that I could come up with a situation in which the centrifugal force is the centripetal force. This is great. I can end all the confusion between ...

It’s centripetal because the force is always being pulled towards the center of the circle. Since we live on Earth, objects are also going to have other forces acting on them, like friction and ...

All of the objects in our solar system are acted upon by forces. Forces are pushes or pulls. Every force has both a strength and a direction. Applying a force on something–like pushing a toy car–can ...