Abstract
Christiaan Huygens created the term “centrifugal force” in 1659; for us to understand this conceptual advance, we first recount some ancient history, and then some more recent history.
Si mobile circumferentiam percurrat quo tempore bini recursus peraguntur penduli cujus longitudo sit semidiametro aequalis erit mobilis vis centrifuga gravitati aequalis (If a mobile body traverses the circumference at the same time as the two recursions of a pendulum whose length is equal to the semidiameter, the body's centrifugal force will be equal to gravity)
— Christiaan Huygens, letter to Henry Oldenburg, 4 September 1669
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Moser, T.J., Robinson, E.A. (2024). Huygens and Centrifugal Force. In: Walking with Christiaan Huygens. History of Physics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46158-3_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46158-3_9
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