Re: [HM] The Foucault pendulum.

Tony Mann (A.Mann@greenwich.ac.uk)
Thu, 28 Jan 1999 14:35:46 GMT

> pages. You can illustrate this lack of appreciation of the subleties of the
> experiment easily: take a piece of string and a weight, a bunch of keys,
> for example, and make as careful a setup as you want. With a very little
> practise, you can make it (and therefore the earth?) precess in either
> direction, for no clearly visible reason!
>

There is a recent paperback (I'm afraid I can't remember the author's
name) called, I think, "The case of Mrs Hudson's cat", in which
Sherlock Holmes solves various mysteries with scientific resolutions
(mainly involving relativity and quantum mechanics). One of them
concerns Foucault's pendulum, but I rather suspect that, in view of
the above comment, it is somewhat idealised.

Tony

Tony Mann

School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences
The University of Greenwich
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UK

Tel: + (44) (0)181 331 8709
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