Pendulum and the globe. Fun physical experience at home

ENTERTAINING EXPERIENCES AT HOME
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Pendulum and the globe. Physical experiments

Entertaining experiments in physics

Entertaining experiences at home / Physics experiments for children

You have certainly heard that the globe rotates. There is several proofs this rotation. And one of the most obvious was found by the French physicist Foucault. In 1850, he hung a huge pendulum in the Paris Pantheon - a hall with a very high dome. The length of the suspension was 67 m. And the ball was very heavy - 28 kg. After all, the pendulum had to swing for many hours in a row.

From below, a point was attached to the ball, and on the floor of the Pantheon a bed of sand was poured into a ring. The pendulum has been swung. The point began to leave grooves in the sand. And what? A few hours later, the pendulum drew grooves in a completely different part of the bed. The plane of oscillation of Foucault's pendulum seemed to turn clockwise!

In fact, of course, this plane retained its former position. Our planet is spinning. It slowly and majestically turned counterclockwise, taking with it the Pantheon with its dome and sand bed. And this movement of the Earth could not be transmitted only to the pendulum. He was hanging on a flexible cable!

You can repeat the famous Foucault experiment at home, on the kitchen table.

Pierce an apple or large potato with a thin splinter so that both ends stick out from the outside. Tie a string to one end. Get a pendulum. Tie the free end of the thread to a pin stuck in the cork. Place this cork on three forks inserted obliquely into it. Place your tripod on the plate and adjust the length of the thread so that the bottom end of the splinter reaches almost to the bottom of the plate.

At the edges of the plate, pour two beds of powdered sugar or fine salt. They will replace the sand in Foucault's experiment. Swing the pendulum now. The torch will trace traces in the beds of powdered sugar. With each swing of the pendulum, the end of the splinter will follow exactly in the same footprints. But our modest plate depicts the globe. Imitating the rotation of the Earth, begin to turn the plate quietly, without pushing.

Pendulum and globe

Look! The direction of the pendulum's oscillations remains the same. It continues to swing all in the same plane. And so the end of the sliver leaves new traces aside from those that he drew before!

Author: Galpershtein L.Ya.

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