The Foucault Pendulum Precession and the Additivity of Infinitesimal Rotations

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to give an intuitive explanation of the Foucault pendulum precession (Fpp) by exploiting the easily proved result that infinitesimal spatial rotations about different axes in three dimensions are additive. This allows to explain in a simpler way the Foucault precession by combining physical laws, intuition and a few elementary notions of astronomy. The paper is by no means intended to replace the material given in standard texts of classical mechanics; it is only an interdisciplinary description of the Foucault precession tailored for non specialists.