Re: non-inertial frames

[al clark <al@sci.nccu.edu>]

On Wed, 24 Apr 1996, Rauber, Joel Phys wrote:

> I much prefer the term "kinematical" force to "fictitious".  My
> arguement is simply that there is nothing fictitious about them.
> When I'm riding in a car in the front passenger and the driver
> makes a sharp left turn too fast.  There is nothing fictitious about
> the bruise on my right arm as I get slammed into right door handle.  In the 
> carnival rides where the people line the inside wall of the rotating "tin" 
> can and the floor drops out from under them, there is nothing fictitious 
> about the force they feel in that non-inertial frame of reference which 
> keeps them from sliding down to the floor (actually its the normal forces 
> present in my examples which are balancing the "kinematical" forces that 
> cause the bruise and account for the frictional force holding up the 
> person).  In other words, I'm saying that we actually "feel" these forces, 
> therefore the term "fictitious" is somewhat of a misnomer.
You do not feel a force pulling you out, ie. a centrifugal force, What 
you feel is the force pushing you in. In an inertial frame, that would 
have to be balanced by another force for you to stay in the same place, 
ie. "centrifugal force", but that isn't the case in a rotating frame.
Al Clark