How can one prove to students that the earth rotates. Any instructions on how to build a pendulum to show rotation or some other way? – KC
There are many indirect indications that the earth rotates, including the motions of celestial objects overhead, the earth’s winds—particularly the counter-clockwise rotation of surface winds in northern hemisphere hurricanes, and the outward bulge of the earth around its equator. But for a more direct indication, a Foucault pendulum is a good choice.
Unfortunately, a Foucault pendulum isn’t easy to interpret or build. It would be easiest to interpret if it were at the north pole, where it would swing back and forth in a fixed plane as the earth turned beneath it. To a person watching the pendulum from the ground, the pendulum’s swinging arc would appear to complete one full turn each day. However, elsewhere in the northern hemisphere, the plane of the pendulum does change and the pendulum’s swinging arc will appear to complete less than one full turn each day. Nonetheless, the fact that the arc shifts at all is an indication that the ground is accelerating and that the earth is turning.
The problem with building a Foucault pendulum is that it must retain its swinging energy for hours or even days and that it must not be perturbed by activities around it. It must have a very dense, massive pendulum bob supported on a strong, thin cable and that cable must be attached to a rigid support overhead. The longer the cable is, the longer it will take the bob to complete each swing and the more slowly the pendulum will move. Slow movements are important to minimize air resistance. If I were building a Foucault pendulum, I’d find a tall empty shaft somewhere, away from any moving air, and I’d attached a lead-filled metal ball (weighing at least 100 pounds but probably more) to the top of the shaft with a thin steel cable. I’d make sure that nothing rubbed and that the top of the cable never moved. (Over the long haul, there is the issue of damage to the top of the cable because of flexure…it will eventually break here. Wrapping the cable around a drum so that there is no specific bending point helps.) Then I’d pull the pendulum away from its equilibrium position and let it start swinging slowly back and forth. Over the course of several hours, its swing would decrease, but not before we would notice that its arc had turned significantly away from the original arc because of the earth’s rotation.