Lab
Library
Journal
Shop
Sign in
to keep
Share image
1
289
Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930
·
Various
96
HISTORIC
EXPERIMENT
PROVES
EARTH'S
ROTATION
The
famous
experiment
which
proves
that
the
"earth
do
move"
by
letting
the
observer
actually
see
it
twisting
underneath
his
feet,
an
experiment
invented
by
the
French
mathematician
Jean
B.
L.
Foucault
nearly
a
century
ago
was
repeated
recently
under
unusually
impressive
circumstances
before
an
international
scientific
congress
at
Florence,
Italy,
the
same
city
where
Galileo
once
was
persecuted
for
holding
the
same
opinion.
From
the
center
of
the
dome
of
the
Church
of
Santa
Maria
di
Fiore,
Father
Guido
Alfani,
director
of
the
Astronomical
Observatory,
suspended
a
200-pound
weight
on
a
wire
150
feet
long.
On
the
bottom
of
this
weight
was
a
tiny
projecting
point
which
traced
a
line
on
a
table-top
sprinkled
with
sand,
as
the
great
pendulum
swung
slowly
back
and
forth.
At
a
given
signal
Father
Alfani
set
the
pendulum
to
swinging.
While
the
assembled
scientists
watched
it,
slowly
the
line
traced
across
the
sand
table-top
changed
direction.
As
Foucault
proved
long
ago
and
as
the
watching
scientists
well
knew,
the
table
was
being
twisted
underneath
the
pendulum
by
the
rotation
of
the
earth.
Marker
Marker
Fine marker
White-out
Fine white-out
Circle
Paint
Unmarker
Hand
Scalpel
Dice
Sieve
Purify
Undo
Redo
Start over
