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Physics- Centripetal force?

why does a centripetal force not do work on a circularly moving object?

2 Answers

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  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago
    Favorite Answer

    Centripetal Force basically means an object in circular motion. Imagine a race car on a race track. When the race car finishes one lap, it is back in the same position. this means that

    a) The object did not have a displacement

    and if you look at the formula for Work (Work=F net x displacement)

    there was no initial displacement, so it did no work. Hope that helped.

  • hello
    Lv 6
    1 decade ago

    because tthe force is at 90 degrees to the direction of the velocity of the object. So work done = force x distance x cosine of angle

    for 90 degrees, cosine = zero so work done = zero.

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