does an eclipse affect gravity?

Question

foucault's pendulum experiment, is it for real?
if so why isnt the sea affected?

Answer 1

Gravity is a field, like magnetism. So try this thought experiment.

Put a magnet a few inches away from a compass needle. Let the needle settle down. Now move a 2nd magnet along a line perpendicular to the line between the first magnet and the needle. The two fields would combine to attract the needle more strongly. And since the 2nd magnet is moving, the combined field would be changing direction the whole time. So the needle would move, and then as the 2nd magnet got "out of range" it would eventually settle down again.

And yes, the sea is affected: tides are higher, because the combined gravity of the sun and moon is higher. Have a look at this URL:
http://faculty.salisbury.edu/~jwhoward/astro108/Lectures/html/lec3.htm

This combined, moving gravity would also affect a pendulum ... probably causing a permanent change in the direction of it's back-and-forth motion.

All of this should occur every time the moon orbits the earth; if it really happens only during an eclipse, that would be puzzling! Here's another paper on the subject:
http://home.netcom.com/~sbyers11/saxlgraph.txt

That was a very, very good question!!

Answer 2

foucault pendulum has nothing to do with eclipses. It works that way because earth rotates and the pendulum isn't attached to it's rotation, so it rotates from our perspective... Always in the same direction...
And foucault's original pendulum is in Paris, France (when there, ask for the Pantheon. It's in there because that's where he made this experiment : foucault was french.)

Eclipses don't affect gravity BUT, they hapen when 2 celestial bodies are aligned... therefore when their gravitational pull is collinear !!! So, there is a link between the 2, but one isn't the concequence of the other. They're both concequences of the same event : a celestial alignement.

Answer 3

Eclipse is an effect of light and shadow. Gravity is not affected.
Foucault's Pendulum is for real - there's one at the United Nations and another at the science museum in San Diego
The sea is affected by the gravitational pull of the moon. It is not suspended above the surface of the Earth.

Answer 4

I don't think an eclipse affects gravity. An eclipse is simply a situation of the placement of the sun and earth and moon. Of course gravity is dependent on the distance between objects, but I don't see that an eclipse would make it a special case.

Answer 5

no, an eclipse doesn't affect gravity.

tide, alternate and regular rise and fall of sea level in oceans and other large bodies of water. These changes are caused by the gravitational attraction of the moon and, to a lesser extent, of the sun on the earth. More generally, tides are the deformations of celestial bodies from a perfectly spherical shape that result from stresses created by their mutual gravitational attraction (see gravitation). Another way of viewing the tide is as the longest possible ocean wave, one which stretches all the way around the earth. The tide regarded as a wave is sometimes referred to as a tidal wave, although this term has been commonly applied to the shock wave propagated by an underwater earthquake. (To avoid confusion, such shock waves are now called tsunamis, their Japanese name, or seismic sea waves.) Numerous schemes have been proposed to harness the earth's tides, especially in various estuaries, as a practical source of power, but none as yet have proved economically or technologically feasible.

Answer 6

No, eclipse only affect the day on earth.

Answer 7

No one is sure yet, but new studies says it can, read all about the studies at this site.
http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/headline_universe/gravity_eclipse.html

Answer 8

it does affect...but not enough to cause big eefects...the effects are barely noticeable.

Answer 9

No dear...
It dose not affect.