 Is centripetal force a new type of force? That is the question that we will address in this video. We have already seen that when an object moves in a circular motion, and when it undergoes a circular motion, when it moves like this, there is a force which is experienced by the object and that force is towards the center and that force itself is called the centripetal force. But is this a new type of force altogether? Well, it turns out that it's not a new type of force because in different situations, different forces can act as centripetal forces. Centripetal, the word centripetal is really just, it's really just an adjective. It's an adjective to describe the direction of the force and this is the word centripetal. So centripetal, it basically means towards the center and centripetal force means a force that is directed towards the center. So it's used as an adjective to describe the direction of the force. Now, in different cases, there can be different centripetal forces. So let's see. Let's say for instance, this is the moon, this is the moon and it is orbiting the earth and here you have the earth. So in this case, the centripetal force, the centripetal force, that will be the gravitational pull, that will be the gravitational force due to the earth. This is the force that is keeping the moon in its orbit. It is keeping the moon move in a circular orbit around the earth and here we see the force directed towards the center, that is the earth. The centripetal force is the gravitational force. Let's look at one more example. So let's say that this is a ball, this is a ball and someone is, someone is, this ball is tied to the center by a string. The string doesn't look that straight. So this is better. So here we have a string and someone is rotating the ball in a circular motion. So you can imagine that there will be a tension. There will be a tension force in the string which is keeping the ball in a circular path and here the tension force acts as a centripetal force. So as always, centripetal force is not a new type of force. The word centripetal just tells us the direction of the force, that is towards the center. There can be more examples. So let's look at more examples. Let's say this is, this is a charge. Let's say this is a positive charge and it's moving in a region of magnetic field and you will learn all about this. It's moving in a region of magnetic field and you can have magnetic field which is directed outside the plane, outside the plane of the screen. All of these magnetic field lines are coming towards you outside the plane of the screen and we can imagine it's a uniform space which means the magnitude of magnetic field is constant. So when a charge enters such region it starts to move in a circle. It starts to carve out a circular path and the force that is towards the center in this case that force will be, that force will be a magnetic force. That force will be a magnetic force and to be precise it's called a Lorentz force. Again you will learn about all of this. It's a type of magnetic force which acts on a charge that is moving with some speed in a region of magnetic field and here you can see that the centripetal force is really the Lorentz force and even if a car is moving on a circular road friction of force will act towards the center. That will act as a centripetal force. So we see that centripetal force not a new type of force just an adjective which describes the direction of the force. This direction really is always towards the center because that is what the word centripetal means.