centrifugal Meaning, Definition & Usage

adjective tending to move away from a center
- centrifugal force
adjective satellite tending away from centralization, as of authority
- the division of Europe into warring blocs produces ever-increasing centrifugal stress
adjective satellite conveying information to the muscles from the CNS
motor.
- motor nerves

L. centrum center + fugere to flee.

Tending, or causing, to recede from the center.
(Bot.) (a) Expanding first at the summit, and later at the base, as a flower cluster. (b) Having the radicle turned toward the sides of the fruit, as some embryos. ✍ When a body moves in a circle with uniform velocity, a force must act on the body to keep it in the circle without change of velocity. The direction of this force is towards the center of the circle. If this force is applied by means of a string to the body, the string will be in a state of tension. To a person holding the other end of the string, this tension will appear to be directed toward the body as if the body had a tendency to move away from the center of the circle which it is describing. Hence this latter force is often called centrifugal force. The force which really acts on the body being directed towards the center of the circle is called centripetal force, and in some popular treatises the centripetal and centrifugal forces are described as opposing and balancing each other. But they are merely the different aspects of the same stress. Clerk Maxwell.