How to Use centripetal force in a Sentence

centripetal force

noun
  • If there isn’t a force like that in the play, the centripetal force sends everybody flying.
    — Jason P. Frank, Vulture, 5 Apr. 2024
  • This spun up the larger star, and the centripetal force flung off material in a huge disk well over a light years across.
    — Phil Plait, Discover Magazine, 12 Aug. 2011
  • Once in space, the wires are unwound by the motor, assisted by the centripetal force of the spinning craft.
    — The Economist, 21 Sep. 2017
  • For any object moving in a circle, there needs to be a centripetal force, or a force pulling it towards the circle’s center.
    — Rhett Allain, Wired, 7 Jan. 2022
  • In this case, scientists installed a poll in the middle of the room to serve as an anchor for some serious centripetal force.
    — Carl Engelking, Discover Magazine, 8 May 2015
  • The force that causes this circular acceleration is then called the centripetal force.
    — Rhett Allain, Wired, 11 Apr. 2020
  • Think back to the vaguely familiar high school science terms of centripetal force and angular momentum.
    — Jeff Berardelli, CBS News, 8 Oct. 2020
  • And also, as expected, Biles was a 4-foot-8 centripetal force that moved the entire room with every step.
    — Brendan Quinn, The Athletic, 30 July 2024
  • As the continent’s essential centripetal force, Germany is needed to fill it.
    — The Christian Science Monitor, Christian Science Monitor, 7 Mar. 2025
  • So, if the telescope moved into a higher orbit (a larger circular radius), the centripetal force would decrease.
    — Rhett Allain, Wired, 7 Jan. 2022
  • The modern city was a centripetal force spinning beyond control, operating at a scale and pace that could only be inhuman.
    — Richard Cooke, The New Republic, 4 Jan. 2021
  • The spod flies through the air-centripetal force holds the crud glob in place until splashdown-then the rocker rights itself, raining a sloppy food cloud onto the lake bottom.
    — Kirk Deeter, Field & Stream, 5 Dec. 2020
  • This water tornado keeps its shape because of centripetal force, which pulls the water toward the center of the bottle as gravity pulls it down.
    — Rebecca Renner, National Geographic, 10 June 2020
  • There are areas in space where there's a happy medium of both gravitational and centripetal forces, which are known as Lagrange points.
    — Meredith Garofalo, Space.com, 15 Feb. 2025
  • The virus has been a centripetal force pushing us physically together — my children, my spouse, my work, and me — but in the best case scenario, that force will weaken soon.
    — Washington Post, 17 May 2021
  • For Hubble, this centripetal force is the gravitational force due to its interaction with the Earth.
    — Rhett Allain, Wired, 7 Jan. 2022
  • The centrifugal forces pulling Europe apart would finally overwhelm the centripetal forces binding it together.
    — Simon Nixon, WSJ, 17 Dec. 2017
  • Scientists call the force acting on an object to keep it following such a curved path a centripetal force, which is always directed toward the center of curvature.
    — Keith Cooper, Space.com, 13 Jan. 2025
  • This circular motion around the central axis requires centripetal force, provided by the floor of the ship, which pushes Grace toward the center.
    — Encyclopedia Britannica, 23 Mar. 2026
  • Lagrange points are stable areas of space where the gravitational pull of two large masses equals the centripetal force needed for a small object to keep pace, which means much less fuel is needed to stay in position.
    — Darren Orf, Popular Mechanics, 10 Feb. 2023
  • Notwithstanding his latest setbacks, Putin remains the centripetal force holding the Russian state together.
    — Time, 30 June 2023
  • Without any mind-blowing sci-fi level breakthroughs, the only practical way to imitate gravity on a trip to Mars is by spinning the spacecraft and creating a centripetal force.
    — Yuen Yiu, Discover Magazine, 11 Aug. 2021
  • Without any mind-blowing sci-fi level breakthroughs, the only practical way to imitate gravity on a trip to Mars is by spinning the spacecraft and creating a centripetal force.
    — ABC News, 25 July 2021
  • Such notions, notes a disinterested British official, run up against the centripetal forces that drive many EU countries to remain as close to the core as possible.
    — The Economist, 2 Nov. 2017
  • Three of the four starting forwards that night had been, at one stage or another over the past 14 months, edging towards an exit only for Villa’s apparent centripetal force to drag them back in.
    — Jacob Tanswell, New York Times, 9 Mar. 2026
  • Objects traveling in a circular path experience an acceleration inward towards the center of the circle and a force—the centripetal force—outward from the center.
    — Kyle Hill, Discover Magazine, 10 Dec. 2013
  • The evidence suggests that there are centripetal forces that keep metropolitan areas from continually expanding outward, and that centripetal force is going to remain.
    — Ian Duncan, Washington Post, 2 Dec. 2022
  • The stifling centripetal forces of globalism despise the defiant particularism of the Jewish nation and the modern Jewish state.
    — Newsweek, 18 Mar. 2025
  • The basic concept of a O’Neill cylinder is that a spinning tube-like structure simulates gravity via a centripetal force acting on humans living on the cylinder’s inner surface.
    — Darren Orf, Popular Mechanics, 30 Jan. 2023
  • These days, more of my thoughts arrive as trite, Twitter-size observations, and my more offbeat tastes have been transformed into smoother, more mainstream ones by the centripetal force of algorithmic recommendations.
    — Kevin Roose, New York Times, 16 Apr. 2020

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'centripetal force.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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