Constellation, le dépôt institutionnel de l'Université du Québec à Chicoutimi

Résumé

All unsustained physical pendula undergo various types of damping processes which make them irreversible quasi-periodical devices. Their recent use as instruments for detecting cosmological micro-anomalies requires the determination of system anisotropy with the utmost precision, notwithstanding an inherent variance due to the strictly aperiodical behavior. An image processing algorithm has been developed for analyzing a camera monitored Foucault pendulum. This greatly improves precision in the determination of swinging azimuth, precession angle, swinging amplitude and swinging period. To the authors’ knowledge, the very weak anisotropy of a long Foucault pendulum has been, for the first time, experimentally characterized in terms of the zero-amplitude swinging period plus a conservative wave in period and amplitude.