Polar pendulum

[Notebook]

http://www.phys-astro.sonoma.edu/graduates/baker/southpolefoucault.html

Anyone try it on the North Pole?

N.

 

[Bj]

http://www.phys-astro.sonoma.edu/graduates/baker/southpolefoucault.html

Anyone try it on the North Pole?

N.

Sure Ill go. Give me a few dozen years though

seriously, why?
We already know it takes 24 hours (and some change) to make one revolution.

 

[Andy44]

"Since it is against the Antarctica Treaty to have any open flames at the South Pole ..."

What?!

 

[Notebook]

Sure Ill go. Give me a few dozen years though

seriously, why?
We already know it takes 24 hours (and some change) to make one revolution.

I think they were bored...

You could use one of those stabalised oil drilling ships. look a bit odd though.

N.

 

[tblaxland]

What?!

The text of the Treaty is here: http://www.scar.org/treaty/at_text.html. No mention of open flames. I have known of open flame being prohibited for safety reasons though. There would be few worse things than losing your only shelter in such an inhospitable place.

---------- Post added at 14:13 ---------- Previous post was at 10:27 ----------

One thing has been bothering me. The period of rotation of the Earth is approximately 23 h 56 m 4s. The experiment mentions that the period for there Foucault Pendulum was 24 h 50 m. That implies that the experiment was conducted at latitude 74.5°S. Yet the pictures in the report suggest that they were at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station at 90°S, were the period should be 23 h 56 m. Can anyone explain the difference?

EDIT: Maybe they made a typo and it should have read 23 h 50 m instead. Perhaps 6 minutes is within their measurement error, given the inaccuracies that would be introduced by restarting the pendulum.

 

[Bj]

One thing has been bothering me. The period of rotation of the Earth is approximately 23 h 56 m 4s. The experiment mentions that the period for there Foucault Pendulum was 24 h 50 m. That implies that the experiment was conducted at latitude 74.5°S. Yet the pictures in the report suggest that they were at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station at 90°S, were the period should be 23 h 56 m. Can anyone explain the difference?

Probably from the rig itself;

[FONT=Technical,Times]At the apex of the arc a mark was made on the floor corresponding to a pointer on the bottom of the bob every 20 minutes for 24 hours. There was no mechanism for keeping the pendulum swinging and the amplitude decayed within a couple of hours so it had to be restarted periodically over the 24 hour period.[/FONT]

Restarting the pendulum by human interference would have allowed the time to be off slightly, even then it was pretty good that they got it to be so close.

 

[Notebook]

Does demonstrate the difficulties of making observations in those conditions. Makes the 'Heroic Era' of polar exploration even more impressive.
Wonder how that pendulum would behav on the Moon?

N.