Re: centrifugal force

[Leigh Palmer <palmer@sfu.ca>]

>       The stance of Newtonian Mechanics is that if you can find a
> consistent set of "forcing" agents to account for the accelerations
> which you observe then you are (at least operationaly) in an inertial
> frame and can use F=ma.  If not then this is how you
> discover and measure YOUR a.

That is perverse! In Newtonian mechanics an inertial frame is
operationally defined as one in which the law of inertia holds;
it is as simple as that. In a rotating frame one can certainly
find an "agent" which accounts for accelerations observed (the
rotation is such an "agent"), but few would claim that the
rotating frame is an inertial frame.

Leigh