Quote:
Originally Posted by W2R
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P.S. - - as for the Foucault pendulum, here's a quote from Wikipedia that explains why it works at mid latitudes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foucault_pendulum
At the time, my father explained why it worked even in Chicago to me (in simple words, minus the trig) when he was trying to pry me away from the exhibit.
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Thanks, and actually the math makes sense to me (in general, I didn't work through the formulas), that vectors would modulate the effect between the poles and the equator, I'm just having trouble visualizing it.
And now it's worse! I actually took out a globe, and thought about the pendulum at the North Pole (move over Santa!), and now I'm thinking that when the observer lets go of the pendulum, it would have had the same inertia as the observer, so should keep moving
with the observer. Why would it 'stand still' with the Earth rotating under it? Seems to me it would move with it. Same as when we jump up, the Earth doesn't move at thousands of mph under us and we land a few feet away, we move with the Earth.
OK, I'll go back and read the full article, but that's puzzling to me now.
-ERD50