Foucault’s Pendulum at the Pantheon in Paris

The Pantheon in Paris is a mausoleum dedicated to the heroes of the French revolution. Despite looking a lot like a church inside, you won’t be able to find anything religious inside the Pantheon. The inside is very Romanesque and if you didn’t know any better, you would think that this was a church. However, instead of statues of saints, you have statues of the heroes of the revolution. I don’t know any of these figures so I would have to assume that these were very prominent people to be able to make it here. There was one odd feature in the Pantheon which stood out for me.

There is a weight which is suspended from the ceiling of what would have been the crossing of the Pantheon. The weight doesn’t quite reach all the way to the floor but you can see it moving. Yes, this is a pendulum. It is fenced off from visitors so you can watch it swing in all its glory. Apparently, a French physicist Leon Foucault thought that a pendulum would be affected by the earth rotation. He performed a demonstration of diurnal motion at this very Pantheon. The demonstration explained to both academics and lay people about the rotation of the earth and ultimately, Foucault became best known for this. A replica of the pendulum still swings at the Pantheon to this day.

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