 |
| Panthéon and Foucault pendulum |
The Paris Pantheon (from Greek, it means "Every god") is a building in the Latin Quarter of Paris.
The inscription above the entrance reads AUX GRANDS HOMMES LA PATRIE RECONNAISSANTE. This is because during the early stages of the French Revolution, the National Constituent Assembly decided to convert the old church Abbey of St. Genevieve, already remodeled in 1790, it into a secular mausoleum for prominent Frenchmen.
An early example of neoclassicism, with a façade modeled on the Pantheon in Rome, surmounted by a dome that owes some of its character to Bramante's "Tempietto", the Pantheon looks out over all of Paris.
Among those buried in its necropolis are Voltaire, Rousseau, Victor Hugo, Émile Zola, Jean Moulin, Marie Skłodowska-Curie, Louis Braille, Jean Jaurès and Soufflot, the architects of the Pantheon.
...more on wikipedia
The Foucault pendulum is a tall pendulum free to oscillate in any vertical plane. The direction along which the pendulum swings rotates with time because of Earth's daily rotation. This is because the plane of the pendulum's swing, like a gyroscope, tends to keep a fixed direction in space, while the Earth rotates under it. The first public exhibition of a Foucault pendulum took place in February 1851 in the Meridian Room of the Paris Observatory. A few weeks later, Foucault made his most famous pendulum when he suspended a 28 kg bob with a 67 metre wire from the dome of the Panthéon, Paris. The plane of the pendulum's swing rotated clockwise 11° per hour, making a full circle in 32.7 hours.
...more on wikipedia
