![]() Now the compass gives you a very specific direction, North-South, ending in two distinct points, which we call the magnetic poles. We can observe the field generated as it surrounds us and extends all the way into space, and you can follow the field lines (like you might have seen in school experiments with magnets) using a compass. So our planet has a magnetic field generated by the motion of liquid iron alloy at the center of our planet. The Detroit musicians became meme-worthy in 2010 for asking “F#cking magnets, how do they work?” and magnets, or the magnetic field of the Earth, is by far my number one way to deal with flat-Earthers. How could this happen if we were on a static disk? Well, it wouldn't. This is aptly called Foucault’s pendulum. ![]() As a pendulum swings, the plane of its oscillations rotate and the time it takes to do a full circle depends on its latitude. This method was first performed by French physicists Léon Foucault in 1851. And by using such an instrument you can demonstrate that the Earth is not only a sphere, but it's rotating too. If you make your little gravity detector a smidgen more sophisticated you can create a pendulum.
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