Earth's Rotation Day

On January 8 every year, it is Earth's Rotation Day. The rotation of the earth is a phenomenon that we all know. It happens as our planet rotates on a vertical axis around the sun. This happens every 24 hours.

We all learned about this in our Geography and science classes at school. However, there is a date that is dedicated to the same. January 8 is celebrated as Earth Rotation Day to commemorate the first show that was made to showcase it many years ago.

The History of Earth's Rotation Day

In 1851, French physicist Léon Foucault demonstrated how the earth rotates by hanging a copper sphere filled with lead from the top of the Panthéon in Paris. This device, now known as the Foucault Pendulum, showed the plane of motion of the rotating pendulum relative to the rotation of the Earth itself.

Foucault Pendulums can now be found in science museums around the globe. Isaac Newton discovered gravity but he didn't really explain the cause behind it, merely that it exists as a force.

The Day of the Wheel of the Earth honors Foucault's first public demonstration, and from what we can find, historically, the day has been celebrated on the anniversary of that event. With that said, it's unclear who was the first to mark the Earth's Rotation Day event or when they decided to do so. It may not have happened in Foucault's lifetime, but we can't be entirely sure.

Significance

The idea and meaning of this day is quite simple. It is to celebrate the phenomenon as well as learn more about Foucault's popular experiment. Children across the globe learn about this phenomenon with great enthusiasm and want to know more about it. Curiosity never diminishes to the same.

How to celebrate Earth’s Rotation Day

The Earth rotation is every day, which is not Earth Rotation Day, so you should celebrate it. If you’d like to see the Foucault Pendulum, let visit the nearest space and science museum. They are actually quite interesting considering the operation.

You can also visit your local space and science museum to learn more about the earth's rotation. You can do some research into the history of how we view the earth's relationship to the universe to have changed. At one time, it was believed that the earth was the center of the universe and that everything revolved around it - the planets, the sun, the moon and the stars.

Then the hypothesis arose that the sun was indeed the center of the universe before scientists realized that was not the case either. In other words, the earth is not actually a fixed sphere at the center of the universe. It rotates on its axis, and Earth's Rotation Day is to honor that.