Foucault pendulum
Demostración de la rotación terrestre con el péndulo de Foucault
- Date
- 1851 · confidence high
- Place
- Panthéon, Paris, France
- Credited to
- Léon Foucault
- People
- 👤 Léon Foucault1819–1868
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
The plane of oscillation of a 67 m pendulum hung in the Panthéon slowly rotates, the first direct, laboratory proof of the Earth's rotation. It shows the reality of non-inertial reference frames and the Coriolis force.
Foucault also measured in 1850 that light travels slower in water, refuting the corpuscular theory.
What it led to
- Gyroscope (Foucault, 1852)
- Dynamics in rotating reference frames
- Inertial navigation
- Meteorology (Coriolis effect)
Built on
- Newtonian mechanics
- Coriolis force (1835)