In a special way, Google chose today to honor the 194th birthday of Jean Bernard Léon Foucault, with the image of his famous pendulum. In fact, the famous search engine also provides the user with the ability to move it, so that we can all become researchers for a while and see in the most direct way the confirmation that "the Earth rotates.".
The son of a publisher from Paris, Foucault was home-schooled and then chose to study medicine, which he abandoned due to his fear of blood. He soon became interested in experimental physics, especially optics, and was responsible for important discoveries in chemistry, electricity, and magnetism
His work, particularly on the speed of light in "vacuum", air and other transparent bodies, as well as his research on telescopes, heat and currents, are considered classic, while he also discovered Eddy currents.
But in the field of Mechanics, Foucault's discoveries were no less important. With the well-known "Foucault Experiment" or pendulum experiment that he attempted in 1851, he proved the rotation of the Earth around its axis.
To construct the pendulum, Foucault used a long rope to reduce the damping effect and a weight to keep the rope taut. He set the pendulum in oscillation at the North Pole and assumed that if the earth did not rotate, the pendulum would oscillate exactly vertically in the same plane. However, because the earth rotates, the vertical plane of the pendulum is tilted in the opposite direction to the direction of the earth's motion due to the Coriolis force.
It appears as if the earth is spinning under the pendulum, which is exactly what happens. This rotation of the plane will make a full circle in a day or half (so it will appear as if it has returned to its original position) in 12 hours.
The experiment was first presented in February 1851 in the Meridian Hall of the Paris Observatory, the first dynamic proof that the Earth moves.
The crater "Foucault" on the moon is named in honor of the French scientist. While he himself had received countless honors. He passed away on February 11, 1868 at the age of just 49.
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