Pantheon

Yesterday we went to the pantheon. The pantheon is a great big building that was originally built as a church, however Napoletana decided it should be used as a national building as well.  They decided to do an experiment there as they needed a place of a certain height to meet the requirements of a pendalunium science experiment. The pendalumion science experiment was an experiment to show that the world spun. 

The giant pendulum swings in a straight line back and forth and the earth underneath it rotates. As the earth rotates the big panel underneath that show the time spins but the pendulum just keeps going straight. This proves the earth is the one spinning. When we first saw the pendulum it was swinging over the 12.30 part, and when we came back an hour later the earth had certainly moved as it was swinging over the 1.30 part.

Because we were in Paris it was spinning clockwise, but in NZ it would be spinning anti clockwise.

Thinking about this was mind blowing.

The string was 67 metres long and 1mm thick and the ball weighed 28 kilos.

Underneath the pantheon there was a humongous crypt where there were lots of famous dead people buried there such as Jean Moulin, the leader of the French resistance, Marie Curie, who won two Nobel peace prizes and Jean Braille who created the raised dots for the blind, so named Braille.