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The Foucault pendulum or Foucault's pendulum is a simple device named after French physicist Léon Foucault, conceived as an experiment to demonstrate the Earth's rotation. If a long and heavy pendulum suspended from the high roof above a circular area is monitored over an extended period of time, its plane of oscillation appears to change ...
The oldest Foucault Pendulum in Romania is located in pavilion B of the University of Oradea. It was installed in 1964 by Prof. Coriolan Rus, the then dean of the Faculty of Mathematics - Physics. (length: 14m; weight: 60 kg) "Vasile Alecsandri" National College in Galați (length: 9,92m; weight: 8 kg)
Jean Bernard Léon Foucault (UK: / ʒ ɒ̃ ˈ b ɛər n ɑːr ˌ l eɪ ɒ̃ ˈ f uː k oʊ /, US: / ˌ ʒ ɒ̃ b ɛər ˈ n ɑːr l eɪ ˌ ɒ̃ f uː ˈ k oʊ /; French: [ʒɑ̃ bɛʁnaʁ leɔ̃ fuko]; 18 September 1819 – 11 February 1868) was a French physicist best known for his demonstration of the Foucault pendulum, a device demonstrating the effect of Earth's rotation.
A pendulum bob at rest at the Equator is still rotating with the Earth and there is no spin on the bob. The pendulum is moving with the rotation of the Earth when located at the equator, as is the support structure, so one can't see the rotation of the Earth in relation to the pendulum.
Foucault published two papers in 1852, one focused on astronomy with the weight free to move on all three axes (On a new experimental demonstration of the motion of the Earth, based on the fixity of the plane of rotation) [8] and the other on mechanics with the weight free to move on only two axes (On the orientation phenomena of rotating bodies driven by a fixed axis on the Earth's surface.
An example of the detection of a non-inertial, rotating reference frame is the precession of a Foucault pendulum. In the non-inertial frame of the Earth, the fictitious Coriolis force is necessary to explain observations. In an inertial frame outside the Earth, no such fictitious force is necessary.
At this rate a Foucault pendulum would have to oscillate for more than 16000 years to precess 1 degree. Despite being quite small, it is still two orders of magnitude larger than Thomas precession for such a pendulum. The above does not include the de Sitter precession; it would need to be added to get the total relativistic precessions on Earth.
If one rotates [a heavy shell of matter] relative to the fixed stars about an axis going through its center, a Coriolis force arises in the interior of the shell; that is, the plane of a Foucault pendulum is dragged around (with a practically unmeasurably small angular velocity).