Magical Experiments by Arthur Good

Author:Arthur Good
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Courier Publishing
Published: 2019-03-13T16:00:00+00:00

Foucault's Pendulum.

When the table is cleared for dessert, you can, with the assistance of an apple or an orange, repeat the celebrated experiment of Foucault, which was performed beneath the dome of the Pantheon, in Paris, in the year 1851.

Pierce your orange with a wooden toothpick, so that the ends project : to one of these ends attach a thread ; and so you have your pendulum.

The other extremity of the thread is to be knotted, and a pin passed through the knot, which, in its turn, is thrust into a cork. The cork is supported on a tripod of forks (as in the illustration), set upon a dish or plate.

Now oscillate your pendulum, having first regulated the length of the thread in such a way that the lower end of the toothpick nearly touches the base of the plate, and therefore leaves its mark in the little heaps of powdered sugar at either side, which are intended to represent Foucault's circles of sand, disposed about the point of the pendulum.

The platter represents the earth. As long as the plate remains in one position, your pendulum will strike the sugar at the same point, and plough a single furrow.

If now, to imitate the rotation of the earth, we slowly turn the plate upon its axis without interfering with the pendulum (of course the forks and cork follow the plate), we shall observe that the direction of oscillation of the pendulum is not in the least changed, but that, as the plate turns, and in proportion as it turns, a new furrow is cut every time by the toothpick in the sugar.

In quite a simple practicable manner, then, we have demonstrated the invariability of the plane of oscillation of the pendulum, which is the principle that guided the well-known experiment on a gigantic scale of the French philosopher Foucault,

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