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 be determined. The inverse ratio will determine the time observed for one full rotation of the pendulum swing in comparison to the duration at the pole of one day. From the diagrams two points of the pendulum swing can be chosen to project straight down to two points on opposite sides of the Earth (180° apart). This makes it easy to obtain the velocity vector difference and then the time observed for a full rotation from the inverse ratio. The examples show that the Earth turns underneath the plane of the pendulum swing and how this change in relationship can