The first Foucault pendulum in Russia, beyond the Arctic Circle

The Foucault pendulum is an instrument that demonstrates the daily rotation of the Earth: due to the length of the string on which the pendulum is suspended, during the day it fluctuates according to the daily changes in the rotation of the planet and draws the corresponding pattern (either on sand under the pendulum or by other marking methods ). In Russia, before the pendulum was launched in the Murmansk Regional Universal Scientific Library, there were seven large Foucault pendulums-the northernmost was in Yoshkar-Ola, and the largest was in the USSR in the St. Isaac’s Cathedral-its size was 98 meters.

Now the title “Foucault’s largest pendulum in the Arctic” was given a pendulum, launched February 8 in the Murmansk Regional Universal Scientific Library. The length of its thread is 21 meters, and the weight of the suspension is 28 kilograms. Now, the Murmansk Regional Universal Scientific Library will regularly hold demonstrations of the pendulum.