Curiosity
Google Doodle Commemorates Birthday of French Physicist Léon Foucault
The latest Google Doodle marks the 194th birthday of Jean Bernard Léon Foucault, the French physicist and inventor of a pendulum that demonstrated the rotation of the earth.
What is a Google Doodle? You may not know what it is by name by you certainly know it by its appearance. The Google Doodle is the logo graphics at the popular search engine’s splash page. Typically, it is just a multicolored image of the name Google.
Today is September 18 and it marks the 194th birthday of the French physicist Léon Foucault who created the pendulum that visually displays the earth’s rotation. So to commemorate that event, Google has updated their “doodle” to be a replica of the Foucault pendulum, his most famous invention.
In a trivia factoid, the world has hemophobia to thank, at least in part, for this wonderful invention. Hemophobia is the fear of blood. Foucault was born in Paris in 1819 and had every intention on being a doctor. He even began that as a course of study until his fear of the human fluid led him to have a change of heart.
Foucault went on to study physics and ultimately created the famous brass pendulum 67 meters long (~220 feet) in the France’s Panthéon located in Paris to demonstrate the planet’s rotation. The pendulum swings at a rate of 11 degrees per hour completing a 360 degree revolution in just under 33 hours.
ON The Web:
Google Doodle remembers French physicist Léon Foucault
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/google-doodle/10316945/Leon-Foucault-remembered-in-Google-Doodle.html
