I learnt my Kinematics at University while studying for an engineering degree, not from some smart alec teacher. Yours wasn't Dawlish by an chance? OK the centrifugal force is not a force field like gravity, magnetism, etc., but the centrifugal force can be calculated, see your link which describe it http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/phys...ugalForce.html . That link is proof enough for me. Strange that one can get so many hits for centrifugal force if it does not exist.

By the way, if you do release the centripetal force, e.g. a hammer at the Olympics games, then it will fly off, just as you predict if the centrifugal force did exist.

As far as your fictitious Professor Darklight is concerned I am quite willing to disbelieve in his existence, or that his dark lights would have worked. However, if he had replaced the bulbs in the lamp posts with his bulbs, then the street would have been darker, just as if you shine cold radiation on an object it becomes colder.

Professor Darklight never carried out his experiment but Professor Pictet did. And he got the results I have described.