Read the following paragraph carefully and answer the following:
Tie a stone to one end of a string. Take the other end in your hand and rotate the string so that the stone moves along a circle.
As long as we are holding the string, we are pulling the stone towards us i.e. towards the centre of the circle and are appliying a force towards it. The force stops acting on it if we release the string. In this case, the stone will fly off along a straight line which is the tangent to the circle at the position of the stone when the string is released, because that the directionn of its velocity at that instant of time. You may recall a similar activity in which a 5 rupee coin kept on a rotating circular disc flies off the disc along the tangent to the disc. Thus, a force acts on any object moving along a circle and it is directed towards the centre of the circle. This is called the Centripetal force.
What is centripetal force?
