Little Girl A: I’m dizzy from spinning around and around. I’m going to fall.
Mr. A: Stop spinning already.
Little Girl A: How do I do that, Mr. A?
Mr A. : Don’t move your hands and legs
Little Girl A: But believe me, I’m not doing anything. I’m just spinning around and around. I don’t know how to stop.
Daphne: Little Girl A is right. The Earth is spinning around and we’re spinning with it.
Little Girl A: They said it in a documentary on TV. Our Earth spins around and around.
Dad: How do we really know that we are spinning around?
Adrian: The simplest answer we can get is that we have day and night.
Daphne: But that assumes we accept the existence of a constant source of light.
Little Girl A: That source is our Sun!
Mr. A: Probably the most scientific way to prove that the Earth is spinning is Foucault’s Pendulum.
Mom: Umberto Eco’s book?
Mr. A: Not exactly. Jean Bernard Léon Foucault was a French physicist. Foucault’s pendulum is a pendulum capable of free oscillation. The characteristics of this oscillation demonstrate that the Earth rotates around its axis. This experiment was first presented in 1851 at the Paris Observatory.
Mom: And what about Umberto Eco’s book?
Dad: That’s different. It’s a book that talks about the Knights Templar, or the Templars (for more details). https://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ναιτες_Ιπποτες).
Daphne: Both of the things you’re talking about are incredibly interesting.
Little Girl A: It would be wonderful to see the pendulum in Paris and have a chocolate crepe.
Captain GG: Off we gooo!
Dad: But how? We don’t have plane tickets.
Captain GG: We’ll do something different this time: we’ll go to Paris from Athens with my ship.
Dad: I know, I know. We’ll go to Spain, pass through Gibraltar, then head north in the Atlantic…
Captain GG: We’ve done this trip before when we went to Santa Claus’s village REF. See you tomorrow morning at Piraeus to start our journey.
ZZZZZZZZzzzzzzz
Dad: When will we pass through the Corinth Canal?
Captain GG: In a little while. After that, we will begin the journey to Gibraltar.
Mom: In Paris, where will we go to see the pendulum?
Mr. A: At the Pantheon.
Little Girl A: Where will we eat chocolate crepes?
Dad: Should we first understand how the pendulum works?
Mr. A: That’s exactly right.
Daphne: I understand very well what this experiment with the turntable shows.
Mr. A: The pendulum swings in a plane that doesn’t change, but the Earth underneath it (or the turntable) rotates.
Dad: Thus, it is proven that the Earth rotates around its axis.
Little A: I have a question. May i ask?
Mom: I know! When are we eating crepes au chocolat!
Little Girl A: Oh, not again! Why is the pendulum so long?
Mom: Isn’t the ball at the end of the string very heavy?
Mr. A: Your questions are very good. To answer, I sat down and read. When the string is very long and the weight is heavy, the oscillations are slow. This means that there are no significant energy losses.
Dad: Why don’t we go find a place to eat chocolate crepes now and enjoy our visit to Paris? Let’s satisfy our minds with Foucault, and our stomachs with crepes!
Little Girl A: We will be in Paris in the summer of 2024. Aren’t we going to see and support our artistic swimming girls at the 2024 Olympics?
Daphne: The next video is from the 2024 water polo games in Belgrade. Will they go to the Olympics?
Mr. A: In Belgrade, the girls won the gold medal. Let’s wish the best for the Olympics!