Just a pendulum recession in two places in the south and north emisphere can show earth shape. Plus a simple measurement of sun rays at different latitudes can easily tell the sun distance. If people didn't study trigonometry that is a different issue.
Discussion
Pendulum precession is meant to demonstrate movement, not shape. Pendulums have to be manually started, they don't exhibit any movement until they are put into motion.
Most distances to celestial objects are speculated through parallax. What I recommend people try is get a decent telescope, manually focus on the moon and then start panning around to mars or Jupiter and see if you need to change the focal length. They all remain in focus.
Pendulum recession demonstrate shape because the axis of oscillation of the pendulum remains pointed I the same direction so while in the northern emisphere it rotates relative to the spinning earth, it rotates in the opposite direction in the south. If the planet was flat the oscillation axe would rotate the same way north and south. I have a telescope. What do you want to focus? At that distance focus is irrelevant. Still if sun rays go down 70° to the ground here and then go to 60° at a different latitude we have two angles and a side. Law of sines and you get the sun distance easily.
Pendulums are for demonstrating motion homie, not shape.
WRT to telescopes, get the claimed distances to the moon and other bodies, don't change focus and they will all remain in focus, demonstrating that the distance claims to those objects cannot be accurate since they require not focal adjustments. Of course focus is relevant. Depth of field and focal length are important when trying to get something in focus, and you are moving from one body to another without readjusting these parameters, then they would be at similar distances.
Stop reading bullshit internet and do experiments. The fact that they cannot tell the shape of earth with a pendulum just means that they do not know physics and just copy paste the same low level stuff without understanding a word. I am a 55 years old engineer. I know a bit more than Wikipedia man.
Are pendulums primarily used to demonstrate motion or shape?
What does even means primarily used. They are primarily used as a time references in clocks.
The procession effect has more to do with the gyroscopic effect than the time of oscillation of the pendulum.
I mean was the experiment devised to determine motion or shape? It's not a difficult question.
Man in 1850 they didn't have the means to speak to someone on Internet on the other side of the planet and set an experiment of comparison of speed of motion and direction of rotation.
Do you understand how the pendulum set at different latitudes gives proof of shape or should we in 2025 still reference to and experiment of 200 years ago without the ability of using it for a bit more? We have planes now they had horses.
On a sphere the pendulum rotation is related to the position on the sphere. We now can and did test it and earth is a sphere unless the aliens generate hidden forces to steer the experiment results and make us believe. Why should they do that?
It's incredible how you can't answer a simple question.
I completely understand how shape is INFERRED from the presuppositions of the experiment, but that was never ever the point of the experiment.
Who cares we are engineers not philosophers or scientists. Stuff that works works. If it is elegant, nice or bad we do not care.
Okay, so you won't answer, presumably because you think I'm trying to gotcha you rather than have a discussion. Just to be clear, I haven't proposed anything obscure by claiming the experiment was devised to test motion.
What are your thoughts on the Allais effect?
Why are the results with these pendulums so inconsistent?
https://odysee.com/@mitchellfromAustralia:d/at-best,-all-you%E2%80%99ve-done,-is-debunk:0
One have you ever tried to watch at Mars with an amateur telescope? Focus what? Second. Read this at least. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspa.2019.0680 set up an experiment and tell me how your results contradict the theory of a ball rotating earth.
Plus novacula Occami .... Every single liquid when not exposed to external forces turns into an almost spherical shape due to the internal coesion forces that on the scale of a planet are mostly gravity. So why should this planet that obviously is hot and melted how we can see from volcanoes and temperature gradient when you go deep, decide to turn into a flat surface? How gravity points down in on the border of the supposed plane the majority of mass is sideways? Why if every body we can see in the sky with enough definition is a sphere? How radio waves that get reflected by ionosphere sometimes go around the planet doing an echo with a timing that is consistent with the radius of the planet? And so on. Ditch the internet that lies and put your hands in real science. Real science=doing reproducible experiment.
I'm not going to engage with this Gish galloping when you won't even address the initial point.
You use Internet as a proof of something. If your demonstration of reality is sending links to Wikipedia do not pretend to even start discussing.
I didn't link anything from Wikipedia, I was showing you that the mainstream position of pendulums is for motion and you're pretending like this is some fringe idea I have put forward.