TITLE: Foucault Pendulum
NAME: Jared Saxton
COUNTRY: USA
EMAIL: jsaxton@folio.com
WEBPAGE: http://www.itsnet.com/~smorton/jared
TOPIC: Math & Physics
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: fcault.jpg
ZIPFILE: fcault.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    povray 3.0

TOOLS USED: 
    LView Pro (for contrast enhancement), CJPEG (for converting TGA to
JPG)

RENDER TIME: 
    30 hours, 7 minutes

HARDWARE USED: 
    Pentium 166

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

The Foucault Pendulum, discovered in 1848 by Leon Foucault, was the first device
used to demonstrate the Earth's rotation about its axis. A Foucault Pendulum
will ignore the local motions of the Earth and will swing in a plane that is
fixed to the rest of the universe.

The Earth rotates "underneath" a Foucault Pendulum. This is most often shown by
a series of pegs aranged in a circle underneath the pendulum. The bob of the
pendulum is released across the center of the circle. The bob knocks over one
of the pegs every so often. After a while you can see the direction of the
Earth's rotation by looking at the pattern made by the fallen pegs.

This image is modelled after the Foucault Pendulum that I have installed in my
home :)


DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

The star pattern on the floor was generated by rotating a triangle shape every
30 degrees around the y-axis. I made the big star from a union of these
triangles. I made the small star by doing an intersection of the same twelve
triangles. The two stars were given a different texture, and the smaller star
was translated a fraction of a unit above the larger star.

The walls were created by translating block objects around with a 'while' loop.
I made sure to randomly translate and rotate the textures on each block.

You may see some columns in the reflection on the floor and in the bob. These
columns are placed at the top of the wall. They were made by translating a
double-column object across the x-axis with a 'while' loop.

The railing is made from an object that is rotated every 30 degrees around the
y-axis. This object was created with cylinders, spheres, and tori.

One thing that I wanted to do, but did not have time for, was to put some motion
blur on the bob. I may do this later.

