Leon Foucault - WordPress.com

* Done by: Sabrina, Andrea, and Tianyi. 2R3

* * Leon Foucault was born on 18th September 1819 and died on 11th February 1868 at the age of 48. He was a French physicist who was best known for the invention of the Foucault pendulum, a device that shows the effect of the Earth’s rotation.

* Foucault was born in Paris and received

education at home, where he studied medicine. He had a fear for blood, therefore he decided to study physics.

* * He investigated the intensity of the light of the sun, as compared with that of carbon in the arc lamp, and of lime in the flame of the oxyhydrogen blowpipe.

* In 1850, he did an experiment using the Fizau-Foucalt apparatus

to measure the speed of light. It is now known as the Foucault– Fizeau experiment, and was viewed as "driving the last nail in the coffin" of Newton's corpuscle theory of light when it showed that light travels more slowly through water than through air.

* He also discovered that light rays differ greatly in lengths of path and on the chromatic polarizations of light.

*

Diagram of a variant of Foucault's speed of

light experiment where a modern laser is the source of light.

* He also invented the Foucault pendulum,

a device demonstrating the effect of the Earth's rotation. * In 1862, he, together with Charles Wheatstone, determined the speed of light to be 298,000 km/s * He showed how the sun could be viewed without injuring the eye by excess of light * He made an early measurement of the speed of light using a laboratory-sized apparatus consisting of rotating and fixed mirrors. * He set up an enormous pendulum in the Panthéon in Paris. The slow clockwise veering of the swing-plane of the bob demonstrated that the Earth was slowly turning anticlockwise below

* * He specially made a deep research on the speed of light. In the

past, there were no advanced technology to help him with his research, so that means he had to do it himself hands on. His determination strives us to do better in our studies and have high hopes for our results. Knowing that Leon Foucault did not have textbooks like us, we should be able to do better than him considering the environment and conditions we have now. In addition, his perseverance and confidence led to his success and we should follow his values to be as successful as him.

* After researching on Leon Foucault and his achievements and how he managed to discover information on light, we feel that he has a strong strive to achieve which led to his success. We learnt that in order to achieve success we have to work hard and persevere. At first when we read about his achievements, we found it difficult to understand the scientific terms and its meaning. Due to the fact that we didn’t understand, we tried researching for the definition and had a better understanding. Although it doesn’t concern our exams and tests, it improves our general knowledge.