Foucault pendulum, the 19th-century experiment that exemplified the earth’s rotation without complex calculations, has found a new home in the recently inaugurated Parliament building of India. The pendulum features in Parliament’s Constitutional Gallery area. It was designed and installed by the National Council of Science Museums (NCSM), Kolkata.
Invented by the 19th century French physicist Jean Bernard Léon Foucault, the pendulum provided simple physical proof that the earth rotated on its axis.
However, as E. Islam, a member of the NCSM team that has built Foucault pendulum models in India and abroad, pointed out in a research paper, the invention was actually an accident. According to Mr. Islam, Foucault was setting up a long and thin metal rod in a lathe when he accidentally plucked it, causing the end of the metal rod to vibrate in the same plane. Its other end rotated while being fixed on the headstock of the lathe.
