Fictitious Forces in Curvilinear Coordinates
See also: Mechanics of planar particle motionA different use of the term "fictitious force" often is used in curvilinear coordinates, particularly polar coordinates. To avoid confusion, this distracting ambiguity in terminologies is pointed out here. These so-called "forces" are non-zero in all frames of reference, inertial or non-inertial, and do not transform as vectors under rotations and translations of the coordinates (as all Newtonian forces do, fictitious or otherwise).
This incompatible use of the term "fictitious force" is unrelated to non-inertial frames. These so-called "forces" are defined by determining the acceleration of a particle within the curvilinear coordinate system, and then separating the simple double-time derivatives of coordinates from the remaining terms. These remaining terms then are called "fictitious forces". More careful usage calls these terms "generalized fictitious forces" to indicate their connection to the generalized coordinates of Lagrangian mechanics. The application of Lagrangian methods to polar coordinates can be found here.
Read more about this topic: Non-inertial Reference Frame
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