eli5: how Foucault pendulum works

Question

eli5: how Foucault pendulum works

In: 11

Answer 1

The ‘bearing’ referred to elsewhere is not really required for this demonstration. The rotation of the earth will ‘twist’ the suspending wire by just 1 turn (or less) per day. The effect of this (if any) would be to rotate the pendulum mass **about the axis of the wire,** NOT to tend to change the plane swept by the motion.