it would be useful if you dated your comments it's much easier to follow the dates that way rather than checking the history i agree with rjstott for the purpose of wikipedia an whoever you are you are surely a person whith a scientific background you certainly don't need this article in wikipedia to explain the centripetal force i wrote the following paragraph in the article it is important to understand right from the start that there is no 'default' 'natural' centripetal force by default objects tend to move in a straight line as newtonian mechanics teaches away from the 'orbit' so in this context by default there is only a centrifugal force at work the centripetal force is being applied either by accident meteors orbiting a planet or artificially satellites orbiting earth the object at the end of a rope etc therefore the centrifugal force is a natural component of a circular movement while the centripetal force is what we conventionally call the force keeping the object 'in orbit' that paragraph has since been removed in favor of a more scientific approach while i can agree that the statements in my explanation might have been misleading or imprecise from a scientific perspective which is why i didn't revert the subsequent changes i think they are a lot easier to understand by the person who needs to be explained how the centripetal centrifugal forces work intuitively again i will not fight for that paragraph but i would like to see something easier to understand for the casual reader in the introduction let me explain what i mean with my intuitiveness concern by using the following example when a kid spins a rock at the end of rope he intuitively feels the centrifugal force you will say that's not correct he is applying the centripetal force that's what he feels but by that standard it would be difficult to explain gravity following the same rationale when you lift a suitcase you apply antigravity to it however the kid will intuitively feel that he's beating some force when you explain that the downward force is called gravity and it's real he's ready to accept that although he's applying an upward force himself people intuitively feel the force they need to beat as the real force the force they apply feels like the artificial part of the equation the upward force to beat gravity is artificial the gravity keeping the suitcase on the ground is natural if you explain things the other way around you confuse the casual reader the same applies at an intuitive level with centripetal centrifugal forces imho if you start the article with an introductory statement which says that the centrifugal force doesn't really exist that confuses the reader then what's the force that i'm beating by holding on to the rope maybe i didn't get it right and s he's most probably going to miss the point of the whole thing long before you get to formulas