Also known as the centrifugal force machine, it is a teaching aid used to show the effects of the centrifugal force that come into play when there is uniform circular motion.
It is composed of a rotating apparatus in which a sturdy, vertical, metal staff assembled on a wooden platform can be made to rotate, more or less rapidly, around its axis by means of a wheel or crank turned manually and a transmission mechanism with a belt and pulley or with pinion and gear wheels.
Different accessories can be attached to the drive shaft to perform several kinds of experiments.
In the exemplar presented here, the rotating mechanism is missing and only three accessories remain; they consist of a U-shaped brass frame (width 76.5 cm, height 13.5 cm). In one of the accessories the frame is closed at the top by an iron rod on which two ivory balls, one three centimetres in diameter and the other four centimetres in diameter, are free to slide.
With this accessory we can demonstrate the dependence of centrifugal force on the mass of the rotating body, on its distance from the rotation axis and on the speed of rotation. ...continues