Study of the Foucault pendulum within the geometric control theory perspective
Felipe Monroy-Perez, Anzaldo-Meneses
In this paper we study the classical Foucault pendulum, indisputable demonstration of the Earth’s rotation movement, through the formalism of geometric control theory. The Pontryagin Maximum Principle is applied for deriving some geometric properties of trajectories in the particular case of small oscillations. A link between the geometry of trajectories and the well known Hopf fibration is established.
CYBERNETICS AND PHYSICS, VOL. 1, No. 2, 2012, 89-95.