Centrifugal force

In the inertial frame of reference (upper part of the picture), the black ball moves in a straight line. However, the observer (brown dot) who is standing in the rotating/non-inertial frame of reference (lower part of the picture) sees the object as following a curved path due to the Coriolis and centrifugal forces present in this frame.

Centrifugal force is a fictitious force in Newtonian mechanics (also called an "inertial" or "pseudo" force) that appears to act on all objects when viewed in a rotating frame of reference. It appears to be directed radially away from the axis of rotation. The magnitude of the centrifugal force F on an object of mass m at the distance r from the axis of a rotating frame of reference with angular velocity ω is:

This fictitious force is often applied to rotating devices, such as centrifuges, centrifugal pumps, centrifugal governors, and centrifugal clutches, and in centrifugal railways, planetary orbits and banked curves, when they are analyzed in a non–inertial reference frame such as a rotating coordinate system.

As the force of gravity acts in a straight line the term has sometimes also been used for the reactive centrifugal force, a real frame-independent Newtonian force that exists as a reaction to a centripetal force causing the free object to follow an angular path against the rotating system.