Centripetal Force Washing Machine

[art sanchez]

The clothes are given a velocity, I assume due to the friction against the walls of the washer. Once they have a velocity (in a straight line) they want to keep that velocity. If no other forces were present the clothes would fly out of the machine in a straight line forever. But, there is a force against the wall of the washer (there's also gravity) which causes an acceleration (change in the direction of velocity). The clothes will want to keep flying in this new direction until they crash into the washer again which in turn changes the angle of velocity, again. The net force is always pointed toward the center of the circle and this is what you call centripetal acceleration.

 

[sophiecentaur]

The clothes are constantly being pulled / pushed into the centre, the water just carries on along a tangent. Hence they are separated.

 

[Let'sthink]

Naming of different forces is creating all the confusion regarding centripetal, centrifugal and so on. Also the term force which occurs in the first two laws of Newton is a different entity than the term action reaction which occur in the third law in place of 'force'. The 'force' that occurs in first two laws represents the net force which may be a single force or a vector combination of many. The 'force' referred in the third law hints at the origin of force that every single force is a result of some interaction. If we understand this or grant it to be true. Then we can solve this naming muddle in a systematic sure way. I will just take two names to illustrate what I am saying:
1. centripetal fore, and
2. gravitational force
The first one just tells you the direction in which the net force is acting, we need to find which interaction or interactions are making that possible.
The second one s[ells out the interaction between Earth and the object in question and focuses on the force acting on the object.

Now these Newton's laws are applicable only in inertial frames. Naturally centripetal force which is experienced only in a non-inertial frame cannot come into picture. In that sense the centrifugal force is called imaginary or pseudo.
For systems in non inertial frames there are two ways of solving the problem. Solve it in inertial frame and then switch over to the non-inertial one. There is another shortcut, wherein we use the Newton's laws with forces of interaction and add a term equal to ma, where a is the opposite to the acceleration of the frame referred to inertial frame. To explain this simply. let as assume that we are in a freely falling lift and in front of us a ball when left also falls freely. . The ball appears at rest to us. If we apply the Newton's law to its motion, then we can conclude that there is no force acting on the ball but we know Earth is pulling both of us. The answer to this dilemma is this that we tell our selves that Newton's laws do not apply in this frame. But if we wish to still make the laws valid for this situation also, we can say that In addition to the force due to Earth there is an upward force mg acting on the object. These two cancel so the object is at rest. This is what you experience as you stand on the floor of a rotating drum with respect to the rotating floor. floor is moving centripetally you are moving tangentially in inertial frame but radially out with respect to the floor. So as long as you are on the floor you can tell yourself that the floor is in no way pushing you out radially. But this thinking gets a jolt as you reach the wall of the drum. Your tendency to go out radially out of the wall causes a reaction by the wall provides you with the required centripetal force necessary to along with the vertical wall with your back touching the wall for convenience. So the so called centrifugal force has caused interaction between the wall and your back to provide the centripetal force required for your motion. In this sense so called centrifugal force, which is not due to interaction is causing an interaction force to be created.