Understanding Physics of Inertial Forces
Force Effects Caused by Inertia and Accelerating Reference Frames
Jul 2, 2009
When a car accelerates forward rapidly, the occupants feel pushed back into their seats. When the car squeals around a curve, occupants feel pulled to the outside of the curve. As the car screeches to a sudden stop, occupants not wearing seatbelts fly forward, possibly hitting the windshield. The car’s occupants may feel like some force is pushing them around, but in reality there are no forces shoving them in the directions they move inside the car. They feel shoved around the car because the car is accelerating. The occupants, however, follow Newton’s first law, the inertial law, and continue their original motion, as the car accelerates.
Newton’s First Law
Also called the inertial law, Newton’s first law requires that any object with no outside forces acting on it continues to move at a constant velocity. A constant velocity is a constant speed in a straight line because in physics the velocity includes direction. Any change in an object’s velocity (increasing speed, decreasing speed, or changing direction) is called an acceleration and requires an external force to act on the object.
This tendency for objects to continue to move at a constant velocity is called inertia.
Inertial Forces
Despite the name, inertial forces are not real forces. Rather they are effects caused by an object’s inertia when the object is in or on something that is accelerating, what physicists call an accelerating reference frame.
For example, consider the occupants of a car rapidly increasing its speed. They feel pushed back into their seats, but not because some force is shoving them in the chest. The only real force acting on them is the back of the car seat accelerating them forward. Because of Newton’s first law, however, these occupants have inertia that tends to keep them at rest. They feel squeezed back into the car seat because the car is accelerating forward while their inertia would tend to keep them at rest.
When the car goes around a curve, it is also accelerating because the direction of the car’s velocity is changing. The occupants’ inertia tends to keep them moving in a straight line. Hence they feel pulled sideways in the car because they experience an inertial force (or effect) caused by the car’s acceleration as it changes direction.
Flying forward into the windshield when a car stops suddenly (Always wear seatbelts!) is a similar inertial effect. The car accelerates to a stop, and the occupants continue moving forward until their seatbelts (or the windshield) exerts a stopping force on the occupants. There is no real force pushing them forward, they just continue their forward motion, as required by Newton’s first law, while the car accelerates (slowing) to a stop.
Circular Motion
To move in a circular path, an object must have a centripetal force acting on it. The centripetal force points inward towards the center of the circle. The outward centrifugal effect is the tendency of the object to continue in a straight line motion. Hence, the centrifugal effect is an example of an inertial force and is not a real force acting on an object moving in a circular path.
Inertial forces feel like forces, but they are not real forces. They are effects caused by an object’s inertia when it is in or on something that is accelerating.
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