Centrifugal force: building physical intuition

About me: I studied Physics at the University of Cambridge, then stayed on to get a PhD in Astronomy. During my PhD, I also spent four years teaching Physics undergraduates at the university.

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[varun]

3:39 Aren't Newton's laws valid only in inertial frames? Wouldn't it then be wrong to say "The object isn't accelerating even though there is force T on it. Therefore there must be another force balancing T" and instead say "Newton's laws don't hold in non inertial frames. Hence the object as seen in this non inertial frame doesn't accelerate even though it has a net non zero force acting on it"?

In other words, can we tell whether we're in an inertial frame or not by just observing an object?