Supervisor: Dr Brett Patterson
This project involves developing the JHI Foucault Pendulum (the prototype for the new Harris Musesum Foucault Pendulum), in order to assess the sources of perturbation in the system and determine how to improve it to allow for continuous operation. In principle, such a system could be used to observe the Lense-Thirring effect, also known as frame dragging, which is an effect in general relativity whereby the spacetime around a rotating object (the Earth) is dragged around with the rotation, and this will affect the rate of precession of a pendulum. An evaluation of the feasibility of this experiment is also within the scope of this project for MSc (Res), and conducting such a measurement would be in the scope of a PhD.