On September 18, 2013, Google posted an animated doodle celebrating the life of Jean Bernard Léon Foucault, a French physicist born on that day in 1819. Foucault is remembered for several things including his experiment demonstrating the speed of light in water is slower than in a vacuum; his famous pendulum with which he demonstrated the rotation of the Earth on its axis; and his invention and naming of the gyroscope that behaved in much the same way as the pendulum. To follow Foucault's logic for the pendulum, one must possess an open mind free of misconception and be able to apply Newton's first law of motion to the observations and measurements before us. Starting with a video of a Foucault pendulum at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, does the arc swing of the pendulum move closer to the pins on the floor or is the floor moving closer to the arc swing of the pendulum? How does Foucault's pendulum really work? And what does this all have to do with satellites and remote sensing?
| Relevant Disciplines: | Physics Physical Science Earth & Space Science |
| Grade Level: | 6-12 |
| Adaptable to Other Grades: | Yes |
| Time Required (class periods): | 1-3 |
| Prerequisites: | See lesson plan |
| Additional Resources Available: | Yes |
Next Generation Science Standards addressed in this lesson:
MS-PS2-2
MS-PS2-4
HS-PS2-4
| Lesson Resources for Foucault's Pendulum | |
| File Type/Link | Description |
| Video-mp4 | Narrated video of the Chicago museum's pendulum as the plane of its swing appears to rotate, 6:41, 33MB |
| Document-pdf | Scriptographic Booklet About Foucault Pendulums, 1.2MB |
| Document-pdf | Complete text of The Scientific American Book of Projects for the Amateur Scientist, 21.2MB |