Léon Foucault pendulum suspended from the roof of the Panthéon, Paris. The experiment caused a sensation in both the learned and popular worlds, and ""Foucault pendulums"" were suspended in major cities across Europe and America and attracted crowds. In the following year he used (and named) the gyroscope as a conceptually simpler experimental proof. In 1855, he received the Copley Medal of the Royal Society for his 'very remarkable experimental researches'. Earlier in the same year he was made "physicien" (physicist) at the imperial observatory at Paris. In September 1855 he discovered that the force required for the rotation of a copper
Foucault pendulum vector diagrams Foucault pendulum vector diagrams Several vector diagrams are often used to demonstrate the physics underlying the Foucault pendulum. Diagrams are provided to illustrate a pendulum located at the North Pole, equator, and 45 degrees N to show how the rotation of Earth in relation to the pendulum is observed, or not, at these locations. This is not a rigorous evaluation but is intended to convey information regarding the interaction of the two moving objects, the swinging pendulum and the rotating Earth. One of the great insights by Léon Foucault is that the time to observe a full rotation of the