Foucault pendulum Foucault pendulum The Foucault pendulum ( ; ) or Foucault's pendulum is a simple device named after French physicist Léon Foucault and conceived as an experiment to demonstrate the Earth's rotation. The pendulum was introduced in 1851 and was the first experiment to give simple, direct evidence of the earth's rotation. Today, Foucault pendulums are popular displays in science museums and universities. 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
Orgone accumulator. The song "Cloudbusting" by British singer Kate Bush describes Reich's arrest and incarceration through the eyes of his son, Peter. The 1985 video, in which Donald Sutherland plays Wilhelm Reich during his research and subsequent arrest, features a Foucault pendulum as an alternative method of demonstrating the rotational motion of the earth to prove the heretical view that the Earth was not the centre of the Universe. The Foucault pendulum in this video simultaneously connects and contrasts the disgraced Wilhelm Reich to both of the respected Foucaults, the scientist, Jean Bernard Léon Foucault and the philosopher, Michel Foucault, who