CENTRIFUGAL FORCE. Have you ever watched an automobile go rapidly around a corner? If so, you have seen how likely it is to "skid" outwards, particularly if the road is wet and slippery. The automobile seems to want to go straight ahead and not to follow the curve of the road. To hold the automobile on the curve we have rough tires, so as to increase the friction of the tires with the road.
In "speedways" for automohile races, the curved track is slanted inwards, so as t( ) hell) overcome this "force" to go outwards. For the same reason the outer rail of a railroad track raised higher than the inner rail at a curve. This tendency of bodies to fly outwards at curves is called the "centrifugal force." It is the resistance that the body offers to changing its direction of motion.
We have instances of centrifugal force wherever we have a rotating body. Thus dirt and water are thrown off tangent to the rotating wheel of a bicycle.
If you whirl a stone in a circle at the end of a string you feel a pull outward on the string; the more rapidly you revolve the stone, and the heavier the stone, the greater is the pull, that is, the greater is the cen trifugal force. With a little skill, you can whirl a bucket of water round your head without spilling the water; for owing to the centrifugal force the water holds to the bottom of the bucket.
however, proved too tame for his spirit, so he turned soldier and for five years served in the Spanish fleets and armies.
At the time of the great battle of Lepanto (in 1571) in which the fleets of Philip II crushed and destroyed the Turkish forces in the Mediterranean, Cervantes was on board ill of a fever. Despite the remonstrances of his comrades, he insisted on rising and taking his full share in the fighting—with the hard result that he received three gunshot wounds, one of which permanently crippled his right hand.
Captured by Pirates and Sold into Slavery Four years later, while returning on leave of absence to Spain, the ship on which Cervantes had taken passage was captured off Marseilles by Barbary pirates, and he and his brother were carried as slaves to Algiers. When the sum sent by their parents proved insufficient to ransom both, Miguel insisted that his brother be freed while he remained in slavery.
When an attempt at escape failed, he took upon himself all the blame before the viceroy, in order that his comrades might go unpunished. The viceroy, struck by his indomitable bravery in the face of a threat of death, then bought him from the renegade Greek who was his master.
to Spain he wrote a number of plays and a novel. As a petty government official he helped to provision that great Armada, which failed so ingloriously in the attempt to chastise the England of Queen Eliza beth. But Cervantes was a poor business man, and was reduced to such straits that he was obliged to borrow money for a new suit of clothes. For a time he was even thrown into prison, apparently owing to money difficulties. One consolation was his, how ever,—that of winning the first prize (consisting of three silver spoons!) at a poetic contest held in the city of Sargossa, in 1595.
With the publication, ten years later, of his im mortal work Don Quixote' (pronounced don kwiks'ot, in Spanish den Ice-holii), Cervantes' fame became secure. The second part, published in 1615, refutes the maxim that "no second part was ever good." Its humor is more subtle and mature, the literary style more even in its excellence, the hero more quaintly dignified and lovable, and the squire more comically shrewd and faithful than in the first part.
Cervantes, the greatest of Spanish writers, died on the very day that Shakespeare, the greatest of English dramatists, passed from earth. Truly those were "spacious days." Undreamed-of vistas were opening in every direction through the exploration and con quest of the New World and the broadening of men's minds with the progress of science. It is not sur prising that in that stirring atmosphere there should be bred heroic men of action, gifted and versatile artists and poets, dramatists and novelists of unsurpassed powers.
Many uses are made of centrifugal force. In laundries the water from wet clothes is thrown off by rotating them in a cylinder with perforated sides. In dairies, the cream separator uses this force to separate the heavier milk from the lighter cream. for when the natural milk is whirled in a properly shaped vessel, the cream stays at the center and the milk goes to the outside; the cream ran then be drawn off. To keep a steam engine at a constant speed, some form of centrifugal governor is used. One form, invented by James Watt for his engine, consists of two heavy balls hung on arms. which fly out when the engine goes too fast, and (Imp when it goes too slow. By means of levers the opening which admits the steam is made larger or smaller so as to hold the engine at a constant speed (sit Steam Engine).