Foucault Rod Model Documents

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Main Document

Foucault Rod Model 

written by Cleon Teunissen

The Foucault Rod model displays the vibration of a circumnavigating rod. One end of the rod is firmly secured to a support. The free end of the rod has a weight attached, like the bob of a pendulum. The support of the rod is circumnavigating a central axis. The plane of swing of the Foucault rod is affected by the rotation in the same way as the Foucault pendulum is.

The simulation shows simultaneously the motion with respect to the inertial coordinate system, and the motion as seen from a co-rotating point of view.  For the co-rotating view there is a close-up view and an overview.

You can examine and modify this simulation if you have EJS installed by right-clicking within the plot and selecting "Open EJS Model" from the pop-up menu item.  

The  Foucault Rod model was created using the Easy Java Simulations (EJS) modeling tool.  It is distributed as a ready-to-run (compiled) Java archive.  Double clicking the ejs_nl_teunissen_foucault_rod.jar file will run the program if Java is installed.

Additional information about this model can be found by visiting the author's web site: http://www.cleonis.nl/index.htm.

Last Modified June 6, 2014

This file has previous versions.

Source Code Documents

Foucault Rod Source Code 

The source code zip archive contains an XML representation of the Foucault Rod model.   Unzip this archive in your EJS workspace to compile and run this model using EJS.

Last Modified November 3, 2009