Why doesn't a spinning object in the air fall?

Question

Let's say I have a ball attached to a string and I'm spinning it above my head. If it's going fast enough, it doesn't fall. I know there's centripetal acceleration that's causing the ball to stay in a circle but this doesn't have to do with the force of gravity from what I understand. Shouldn't the object still be falling due to the force of gravity?

Answer 1

The key fact here is the fact that the string is never perfectly horizontal but always has a small angle downward. The vertical component of the tension in the string is equivalent to the weight of the object, the horizontal component of the tension is the mv^2/r