Paraconic pendulum
A paraconical pendulum is a physical pendulum in which there is a ball at the point of suspension, which rolls on a plane during the pendulum movement. A Foucault pendulum measures the earth's rotation. In contrast to this, a paraconic pendulum measures the gravitational influence of other celestial bodies (especially the moon and the sun) on the pendulum movement. Instead of a thread as in Foucault's pendulum, the pendulum body of the paraconic pendulum is attached to a rigid rod, similar to a clock pendulum. The pendulum length is relatively short and is typically around 1 m. Since the paraconical pendulum is mounted on a ball (hence the name "paraconical") it can also rotate around the longitudinal axis (change of the azimuth angle). The paraconic pendulum thus has one degree of freedom more than other pendulums.
Web links
- GÖDE Foundation, Institute for Gravitational Research, website: Experiments carried out in the IGF ( Memento from August 19, 2010 in the Internet Archive )