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Centrifugal   Listen
adjective
Centrifugal  adj.  
1.
Tending, or causing, to recede from the center.
2.
(Bot.)
(a)
Expanding first at the summit, and later at the base, as a flower cluster.
(b)
Having the radicle turned toward the sides of the fruit, as some embryos.
Centrifugal force (Mech.), a force whose direction is from a center. Note: When a body moves in a circle with uniform velocity, a force must act on the body to keep it in the circle without change of velocity. The direction of this force is towards the center of the circle. If this force is applied by means of a string to the body, the string will be in a state of tension. To a person holding the other end of the string, this tension will appear to be directed toward the body as if the body had a tendency to move away from the center of the circle which it is describing. Hence this latter force is often called centrifugal force. The force which really acts on the body being directed towards the center of the circle is called centripetal force, and in some popular treatises the centripetal and centrifugal forces are described as opposing and balancing each other. But they are merely the different aspects of the same stress.
Centrifugal impression (Physiol.), an impression (motor) sent from a nerve center outwards to a muscle or muscles by which motion is produced.
Centrifugal machine, A machine for expelling water or other fluids from moist substances, or for separating liquids of different densities by centrifugal action; a whirling table.
Centrifugal pump, a machine in which water or other fluid is lifted and discharged through a pipe by the energy imparted by a wheel or blades revolving in a fixed case. Some of the largest and most powerful pumps are of this kind.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Centrifugal" Quotes from Famous Books



... amount of analysis can reveal to us this mystery of unity. Matter is an abstraction; we shall never be able to realise what it is, for our world of reality does not acknowledge it. Even the giant forces of the world, centripetal and centrifugal, are kept out of our recognition. They are the day-labourers not admitted into the audience-hall of creation. But light and sound come to us in their gay dresses as troubadours singing serenades before the windows of the senses. What is constantly before us, claiming our attention, is ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore

... When the mass of this central body has grown so great that the velocity with which it draws the particles to itself with great distances is bent sideways by the feeble degree of repulsion with which they impede one another, and when it issues in lateral movements which are capable by means of the centrifugal force of encompassing the central body in an orbit, then there are produced whirls or vortices of particles, each of which by itself describes a curved line by the composition of the attracting force and the force of revolution ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... orchestra of manifold instruments, each with its own timbre, and yet all in tune and harmony, and no one superfluous. The detection of the individual instruments is possible, if we attentively analyze. The present centrifugal tendency of German literature has strongly developed such a sense for the detection of differences. Recently the attempt has been made to group the entire history of German literature from the most ancient times according to racial stocks and regions, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... The centrifugal paths from the motor speech-center to the motor nerves of speech and to their extremities, or else these nerves themselves, are injured. Then occurs dysarthria, and, if the path is totally impassable at any place, ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer

... that every unit both implies and denies the existence of every other, and that the one is many—a sum of fractions, and the many one—a sum of units. We may be reminded that in nature there is a centripetal as well as a centrifugal force, a regulator as well as a spring, a law of attraction as well as of repulsion. The way to the West is the way also to the East; the north pole of the magnet cannot be divided from the south pole; two minus signs ...
— Sophist • Plato

... adjective with absolute correctness. The policemen tried again and yet again. They got within feet, within inches, of their prey, only to be dragged away by the mysterious protector of militant maidens—centrifugal force. Probably never before in the annals of the struggle for political freedom had maidens found such a protection, invisible, sinister and complete. Had the education of policemen in England included a course of mechanics, these particular ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett

... the dried milk, by a fat solvent, such as ether or benzene, succeeded in completely removing the fat from the other constituents. Since that time simpler and more rapid means have been based upon centrifugal separation of the fat. When a measured quantity of milk is mixed with strong sulphuric acid, which dissolves the casein and other nitrogenous constituents of the milk, but leaves the fat-globules quite untouched, the latter can easily be separated in a centrifugal, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... Plague. The plague broke out in Cambridge as well as in London, and the whole college was sent down. Newton went back to Woolsthorpe, his mind teeming with ideas, and spent the rest of this year and part of the next in quiet pondering. Somehow or other he had got hold of the notion of centrifugal force. It was six years before Huyghens discovered and published the laws of centrifugal force, but in some quiet way of his own Newton knew about it and applied the idea to the ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge

... globe is turned more quickly on its axis, and when very soft and almost incandescent, it is removed from the fire, and the velocity of rotation being still continually increased, the opening enlarges from the effect of the centrifugal force, at first gradually, until at last the mouth suddenly expands or "flashes" out into one large circular sheet of red hot glass. The neck of the original globe, which is to become the outer part of the sheet, is left thick to admit ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage

... abysmal in its depth. He was running his life on a different motor from the motor which moved Harvey; the town was moving after a centripetal force—every one was for himself, and the devil was entitled to the hindermost. Grant Adams was centrifugal; he was not considering himself particularly and was shamelessly taking heed of the hindermost which was the devil's by right. And so men said in their hearts, if this man wins, there will be the ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... "It's only centrifugal force," said Leslie, spinning round between her finger and thumb a needle to whose head she had just touched a globule of the bright black wax. "The world and a pin-head—both made on ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... none the less bound to assert and defend the right of their respective States to manage their own affairs.[I] It was a conflict as old as the Revolution—and even, in its germs, of still older date—between centripetal and centrifugal forces, between national and local patriotism. The makers of the Constitution had tried to hold the scales justly, but in their natural jealousy of a strong central power, they had allowed the balance to deflect unduly on the side ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer

... profitably invert metaphysic and, instead of trying to locate personality in totality, begin with personality and work outwards. (Applause.) Otherwise the process of endeavouring to effect a synthesis of centripetal and centrifugal tendencies would invariably result in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 • Various

... before it had been automatically regulated by the "Governor." The governor has always been the writer's favorite invention, probably because it was the first he fully understood. It is an application of the centrifugal principle adapted and mechanically improved. Two heavy revolving balls swing round an upright rod. The faster the rod revolves the farther from it the balls swing out. The slower it turns the closer the balls fall toward it. By proper attachments the valve openings ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie

... presence of ice in the vicinity of that extreme northern point was feared by no one concerned in the expedition, for it was believed that the rotary motion of the earth would have a tendency to drive it away from the pole by centrifugal force. ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton

... a progressive change of colour, perhaps in some definite order, accompanying the development of tissues or appendages. Thus spots spread and fuse into bands, and when a lateral or centrifugal expansion has occurred—as in the termination of the peacocks' train feathers, the outer web of the secondary quills of the Argus pheasant, or the broad and rounded wings of many butterflies—into variously shaded or coloured ocelli. The fact that we find gradations of colour in many of the ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... history. It has been the history of what has been done by strong men who owed nothing to the refinements of civilization. The interesting events have taken place not at the centre, but on the circumference of the country. The centrifugal force has always been the strongest. There has been no capital to which ambitious youths went up to seek their fortune. In each generation they have gone to the frontier where opportunities awaited them. There they encountered, on the rough edges of society, ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers

... the matter! We're spinning! The whole ship's spinning! That's why we're giddy and why we have even a trace of weight. Centrifugal force! ...
— The Aliens • Murray Leinster

... would not be proper to assume the warden's privileges or endeavor to discharge his duties. In other words, the best thing to do was to keep my place, revolve about in my own orbit, carefully regarding all laws, both centripetal and centrifugal; otherwise, I might burst by the natural pressure of too highly confined interior forces! I confess that, though not subject to such infliction, I very nearly fainted over these ponderous polysyllables! He also informed me that the beautifully paved highway to popularity in the ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds

... ON A COMMERCIAL SCALE.—The specialists of the fruit and vegetable utilization laboratory of the department have completed arrangements for a commercial test of the recently discovered method of concentrating apple cider by freezing and centrifugal methods. As a result, a cider mill in the Hood River Valley, Ore., will this fall undertake to manufacture and put on the retail market 1,000 gallons of concentrated cider, which will represent 5,000 gallons of ordinary apple cider with only the ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various

... speed at which they are driven should be such that as the wheel revolves the goods are thrown from side to side of each compartment; if the speed be too slow they will simply slide down, and then they do not get properly washed; on the other hand, if the speed be too great then centrifugal action comes into play and the goods remain in a stationary position in the wheels with the same result. As to the amount of washing, it should be as before. After this washing they are boiled again in the kier with soda ash, ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech

... greatest quantities, and become much accumulated over the poles of the earth; 2. the common air, or lower stratum of the atmosphere, will be much thinner over the poles than at the line; because if a glass globe be filled with oil and water, and whirled upon its axis, the centrifugal power will carry the heavier fluid to the circumference, and the lighter will in consequence be found round the axis. 3. There may be a place at some certain latitude between the poles and the line on each ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... centres movement to the periphery, thus setting in motion the body in whole or in part. When we make enquiries from the physiologist or the psychologist with regard to the origin of these images and representations, we are sometimes told that, as the centrifugal movements of the nervous system can evoke movement of the body, so the centripetal movements—at least some of them—give rise to the representation, mental picture, or perception of the external world. Yet we must remember that the brain, ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn

... the sewerage and water department, had already designed and patented a centrifugal pump impeller adapted to the handling of sewerage containing trash. Learning of this, W. J. White, superintendent of dredging on the Canal, asked him to design a special impeller, along similar ...
— The Industrial Canal and Inner Harbor of New Orleans • Thomas Ewing Dabney

... slipped away. I had not written a line. My ideas, which had seemed on the point of precipitation, surrendering to some centrifugal eddy, slipped one by one beyond grasp. I suppose every writer of experience knows these vacant terrifying intervals; but they were strange to me then, and I had not learnt the virtue of waiting. I grew flurried, and saw myself doomed to be the ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... supposition that there was any actual violation of the known conditions of gravitation. Certainly Uranus was following his orbit under the centripetal and centrifugal laws in the same manner as the other planets. There must, therefore, be some undiscovered disturbing cause. It had already been noted that in the case of the infra-Uranian planets they were swayed somewhat from their paths by the mutual influence of one upon the other. This was noticeable in particular ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various

... Constitution, it will be recognized as the true embodiment of our permanent nationality, forever paramount in its appointed sphere and appropriate functions to those of the individual States composing it. The sum and substance of the change will be merely that the centripetal and centrifugal forces of the system will have become so completely adjusted to each other, that from this time forward the eternal equilibrium of the whole will be secured. The States will not be shorn of any power rightfully theirs, and necessary for their safety and progress; ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... refusing to see is that the delicate balance of the solar system will be disturbed if a body as large as Antrid is moved a half billion miles sunward. All bodies are kept in their orbits by a nice balance of mass attraction and centrifugal force; if a single one is altered all others are affected. What would happen is easy to calculate. First off, when Antrid approached the inner planets all bodies in the system would change their paths and the altered forces would cause severe ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent

... them together. The recognition of such mutual dependence, when once attained, furthers the practice of mutual concession for the purpose of combined action. Consequently, in the protracted struggle between the centripetal and centrifugal forces in North America, the former prevailed, though not till ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... is always seated here and now, in the self of the moment. The past and the future, things inferred and things conceived, lie around it, painted as upon a panorama. They cannot be lighted up save by some centrifugal ray of attention and present interest, by some ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana

... marvelled greatly at the severe curvature of the extremities of the cycle-track, which were shaped like the interior of a huge bowl, and while I was demonstrating to them how, from scientific considerations and owing to the centrifugal forces of gravitation, it was not possible for any rider to become a loser of his equilibrium—lo and behold! two of the competitors made the facilis descensus, and were intermingled in the weltering hotchpot of ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey

... globe was visible he would see the greatest possible quantity of land spread out in a sort of stellate figure. The maritime supremacy of the English race has perhaps flowed from the central position of its home. That such a disposition would facilitate a centrifugal migration of land organisms is at any rate obvious, and fluctuating conditions of climate operating from the pole would supply an effective means of propulsion. As these became more rigorous animals at any ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... Fans act, and to which they owe their efficiency, consists in their communicating Centrifugal action ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth

... nodules of cancer appear, which, although apparently separate from the primary growth, have developed in continuity with it, peri-lymphatic fibrosis having destroyed the cancer chain connecting the nodule with the primary growth. This centrifugal spread of cancer is clearly seen in the distribution of the subcutaneous secondary nodules so frequently met with in the late stages of mammary cancer. The area within which the secondary nodules occur is a circle of continually increasing diameter with the ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles

... rest—the corporal had made but one turn before a hundred couple more were turning also—the whole room seemed turning. The corporal could not waltz, but he could turn—he held on fast by the widow, and with such a firm piece of resistance he kept a centrifugal balance, and without regard to time or space, he increased his velocity at a prodigious rate. Round they went, with the dangerous force of the two iron balls suspended to the fly-wheel which regulate the ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat

... was larger than ever, and among the newcomers some of the most important were the three Stabilities, named Directional, Longitudinal, and Lateral, with their assistants, the Rudder, Elevator, and Ailerons. There was Centrifugal Force, too, who would not sit still and created a most unfavourable impression, and Keel-Surface, the Dihedral Angle, and several ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber

... and our velocity would increase; as a result, we'd bounce right back out again. The magnitude of the force required to make us fall into that sun is appalling! The gravitational pull on us now amounts to about five billion tons, which is equalized by the centrifugal force of our orbital velocity. Any tendency to change it would be like trying to bend a spring ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell

... noticed, and detached with his hands and the aid of a sharp rock enough of the loose soil to fill the pan. This he took to the spring, and, lowering the pan in the pool, began to wash out its contents with the centrifugal movement of the experienced prospector. The saturated red soil overflowed the brim with that liquid ooze known as "slumgullion," and turned the crystal pool to the color of blood until the soil was washed away. Then the smaller stones were carefully removed and examined, and ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte

... be wrath at George Sand because she did not eternally resist the centrifugal forces of such a life, but rather a deep sense of gratitude that she gave Chopin some sort of home and mental support for ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes

... to this centrifugal tendency of our German national mind nothing will so greatly contribute to it as a vigorous opposition to the free advance of science, such as is just now declaring itself in the metropolis. For by just so much as Berlin is dragged back by it in ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel

... other, but are also the issues and exponents of two leading impulses in the nature of man. Actuated by the one—the centripetal instinct—the shepherd races of Asia founded their great capitals on the banks of the Euphrates and the Ganges: impelled by the other—the centrifugal instinct—they passed forth from their cradle in the Armenian Highlands, westward as far as the Atlantic, and eastward as far as the Pacific. We have indeed indications of roads earlier than we have accounts of cities. For ages before Arcadian Evander came as a "squatter" to Mount Palatine, was ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne

... then set off, with his eyes fixed firmly upon business. A crow could scarcely make less than fifty miles from York to Scargate, and the factor's trusty roadster had to make up his mind to seventy. So great, however, is sometimes the centrifugal force of Hymen, that upon the third day Mr. Mordacks was there, vigorous, vehement, and fit for ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... knows, such gross animals are we, it seems inhuman enough—is a passionate white flame. It is the thin, wavering fire-point of all our struggles after purity and eternity. It is a centrifugal emotion, not, as was the other's, a centripedal one. It is the noble Platonic rising from the love of one beautiful person to the love of many beautiful persons; and from that onward, through translunar gradations, to the love of the supreme Beauty itself. Shelley's "spirituality" is a living, ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys

... host of minor parts. Wheels died hard. Electric locomotives using them were brought out and were considered to do the very fastest thing possible in locomotion, and such was in fact the case while wheels were used, for wheels could not have borne a faster pace without flying to pieces from centrifugal force. But when an inventor devised a machine on runners to move on lubricated rails, a great step was gained, though the invention was not a success, and when, after this, liquid carbonic acid, or carbonic acid ice expanding again to ...
— The Dominion in 1983 • Ralph Centennius

... in color and grain to the Havana. It is a centrifugal sugar—that is, it is not re-boiled to procure its white color, but is moistened with water and then put into rapidly-revolving cylinders. The uncrystalized syrup or molasses is whirled out of it, and the sugar comes out ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette

... corporal's shoulder. This was the signal for the rest—the corporal had made but one turn before a hundred couple more were turning also—the whole room seemed turning. The corporal could not waltz, but he could turn—he held fast on by the widow, and with such a firm piece of resistance he kept a centrifugal balance, and, without regard to time or space, he increased his velocity at a prodigious rate. Round they went, with the dangerous force of the two iron-balls suspended to the fly-wheel which regulate the ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat

... indomitably powerful as a social amalgam, Hinduism failed to generate any politically constructive force that could endure much beyond the lifetime of some exceptionally gifted conqueror. The Mauryan and the Gupta dynasties succumbed as irretrievably to the centrifugal forces of petty states and clans perpetually striving for mastery as the more ephemeral kingdoms of Kanishka and Harsha. They all in turn crumbled away, and, in a land of many races and languages and climates, split ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol

... what it will be like to get back to high gravity," Rip mused. The centrifugal force of the spinning platform acted as artificial gravity, but it was considerably less ...
— Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet • Harold Leland Goodwin

... arrival, was put between great crushing wheels before it was thrown into the vats. The sturdy negresses, up to their elbows, stirred the foaming syrup after it had boiled. Then it was skimmed and boiled again to purify it. It went through a centrifugal process to crystallize it, and afterward was packed in boxes and stamped in less time than it takes to relate this. I liked to breathe the hot vapors coming from the huge tanks. What remains of the sugar is used as fuel; ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone

... dancer runs about as usual in circles, zigzags, and figure-eights. As the speed becomes greater it naturally becomes increasingly difficult for the mouse to do this, but it shows neither discomfort nor fear, as does the common mouse. Finally the centrifugal force becomes so great that the animal is thrown against the wall of the cylinder, where it remains quietly without taking the oblique position. When the cyclostat is stopped suddenly, it resumes its dance movements as if nothing unusual had occurred. It exhibits ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes



Words linked to "Centrifugal" :   centrifugal force, efferent, outward-developing, outward-moving, centrifugal pump, decentralizing, decentralising, motorial



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