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Centripetal force   Listen
noun
Force  n.  
1.
Capacity of exercising an influence or producing an effect; strength or energy of body or mind; active power; vigor; might; often, an unusual degree of strength or energy; especially, power to persuade, or convince, or impose obligation; pertinency; validity; special signification; as, the force of an appeal, an argument, a contract, or a term. "He was, in the full force of the words, a good man."
2.
Power exerted against will or consent; compulsory power; violence; coercion; as, by force of arms; to take by force. "Which now they hold by force, and not by right."
3.
Strength or power for war; hence, a body of land or naval combatants, with their appurtenances, ready for action; an armament; troops; warlike array; often in the plural; hence, a body of men prepared for action in other ways; as, the laboring force of a plantation; the armed forces. "Is Lucius general of the forces?"
4.
(Law)
(a)
Strength or power exercised without law, or contrary to law, upon persons or things; violence.
(b)
Validity; efficacy.
5.
(Physics) Any action between two bodies which changes, or tends to change, their relative condition as to rest or motion; or, more generally, which changes, or tends to change, any physical relation between them, whether mechanical, thermal, chemical, electrical, magnetic, or of any other kind; as, the force of gravity; cohesive force; centrifugal force.
Animal force (Physiol.), muscular force or energy.
Catabiotic force (Biol.), the influence exerted by living structures on adjoining cells, by which the latter are developed in harmony with the primary structures.
Centrifugal force, Centripetal force, Coercive force, etc. See under Centrifugal, Centripetal, etc.
Composition of forces, Correlation of forces, etc. See under Composition, Correlation, etc.
Force and arms (Law), an expression in old indictments, signifying violence.
In force, or Of force, of unimpaired efficacy; valid; of full virtue; not suspended or reversed. "A testament is of force after men are dead."
Metabolic force (Physiol.), the influence which causes and controls the metabolism of the body.
No force, no matter of urgency or consequence; no account; hence, to do no force, to make no account of; not to heed. (Obs.)
Of force, of necessity; unavoidably; imperatively. "Good reasons must, of force, give place to better."
Plastic force (Physiol.), the force which presumably acts in the growth and repair of the tissues.
Vital force (Physiol.), that force or power which is inherent in organization; that form of energy which is the cause of the vital phenomena of the body, as distinguished from the physical forces generally known.
Synonyms: Strength; vigor; might; energy; stress; vehemence; violence; compulsion; coaction; constraint; coercion. Force, Strength. Strength looks rather to power as an inward capability or energy. Thus we speak of the strength of timber, bodily strength, mental strength, strength of emotion, etc. Force, on the other hand, looks more to the outward; as, the force of gravitation, force of circumstances, force of habit, etc. We do, indeed, speak of strength of will and force of will; but even here the former may lean toward the internal tenacity of purpose, and the latter toward the outward expression of it in action. But, though the two words do in a few cases touch thus closely on each other, there is, on the whole, a marked distinction in our use of force and strength. "Force is the name given, in mechanical science, to whatever produces, or can produce, motion." "Thy tears are of no force to mollify This flinty man." "More huge in strength than wise in works he was." "Adam and first matron Eve Had ended now their orisons, and found Strength added from above, new hope to spring Out of despair."


adjective
Centripetal  adj.  
1.
Tending, or causing, to approach the center.
2.
(Bot.)
(a)
Expanding first at the base of the inflorescence, and proceeding in order towards the summit.
(b)
Having the radicle turned toward the axis of the fruit, as some embryos.
3.
Progressing by changes from the exterior of a thing toward its center; as, the centripetal calcification of a bone.
Centripetal force (Mech.), a force whose direction is towards a center, as in case of a planet revolving round the sun, the center of the system, See Centrifugal force, under Centrifugal.
Centripetal impression (Physiol.), an impression (sensory) transmitted by an afferent nerve from the exterior of the body inwards, to the central organ.





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Centripetal force" Quotes from Famous Books



... extend its influence out into the depths of space, so as to include, for example, the moon. Obviously some force pulls the moon constantly towards the earth; otherwise that body would fly off at a tangent and never return. May not this so-called centripetal force be identical with terrestrial gravitation? Such was Newton's query. Probably many another man since Anaxagoras had asked the same question, but assuredly Newton was the first man to find ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... they did not give a still grander idea by expressing the distances in inches. But even this was nothing to the ingenious contrivance of the centrifugal force. "You have heard what I have said of the wonderful centripetal force, by which Divine Wisdom has retained the planets in their orbits round the Sun. But, ladies and gentlemen, it must be clear to you that if there were no other force in action, this centripetal force would draw our earth and the other ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... interests among fellow-citizens, philadelphia, over against the selfish ambition of those naturally ascendant, like Alcibiades or Crito, in that competition for office, for wealth and honours, which has rent Athens into factions ever breeding [255] on themselves, the centripetal force versus all centrifugal forces:—on this situation, Plato, in the central books of The Republic, dwells untired, in all its variety of synonym and epithet, the conditions, the hazard and difficulty of its realisation, its analogies in art, in music, in practical life, like three strings of a lyre, ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... motion, that it was less like motion visible than motion heard. Nothing was distinguishable but the belt of pale fire. That which I had seen before they had now become—a ring of flame intensely swift. As if sucked upward by a centripetal force it rose in the air. Wheeling still with a sound incredibly shrill it rose to my level, swept by me heralded by a keen wind, and was followed by a draught which caught leaves and straws of grass and took them swirling along. Round and ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... peaks of Ben Laoghal, where I saw an eagle poising day after day as if some invisible centripetal force bound him forever to that small circle of air, there was a loch with plenty of brown trout and a few salmo ferox; and down at Tongue there was a little river where the sea-trout sometimes come up ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke


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