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Foucault's pendulum

Foucault's pendulum, named after the French physicist Léon Foucault, is a simple device conceived as an experiment to demonstrate the rotation of the Earth. While it had long been known that the Earth rotated, the introduction of the Foucault pendulum in 1851 was the first simple proof of the rotation in an easy-to-see experiment. The first public exhibition of a Foucault pendulum took place in February 1851 in the Meridian of the Paris Observatory. A few weeks later Foucault made his most famous pendulum when he suspended a 28 kg brass-coated lead bob with a 67 meter long wire from the dome of the Panthéon, Paris (it was moved in 1855 to the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers in Paris). An exact copy of the original pendulum has been swinging permanently since 1995 under the dome of the Panthéon, Paris.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foucault_pendulum

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Uploaded on April 8, 2012
Taken on June 6, 2009