The component form of the centrifugal force, derived from the vector triple product expansion, is expressed as $F_c^i=m\left[\omega^i\left(\omega^j x^j\right)-\omega^2 x^i\right]$. This structure allows the force to be rewritten in the linear tensor product form $F_c^i=T^{i j} x^j$, where the $x$-independent term defines the centrifugal force tensor as $T^{i j}=m\left(\omega^i \omega^j-\omega^2 \delta^{i j}\right).$ This tensor T elegantly encodes the dependence of the centrifugal force on the mass ( $m$ ) and angular velocity ( $\omega$ ), using the Kronecker delta $\left(\delta^{i j}\right)$, and importantly, this resulting tensor $T^{i j}$ is symmetric because both $\omega^i \omega^j$ and $\delta^{i j}$ are symmetric with respect to the indices $i$ and $j$.

<aside> ❓

  1. What is the form of the centrifugal force in component notation before identifying the tensor?
  2. In the linear tensor form, what is the explicit expression for the components of the tensor in terms of mass and angular velocity?
  3. Is the centrifugal force tensor symmetric? </aside>