Task: Question Answering
Input (English): Context: In 1851, a French scientist named Lon Foucault took an iron sphere and hung it from a wire. He pulled the sphere to one side and then released it, as a pendulum. Although a pendulum set in motion should not change its motion, Foucault observed that his pendulum did seem to change direction relative to the circle below. Foucault concluded that Earth was moving underneath the pendulum. People at that time already knew that Earth rotated on its axis, but Foucaults experiment was nice confirmation. Imagine a line passing through the center of Earth that goes through both the North Pole and the South Pole. This imaginary line is called an axis. Earth spins around its axis, just as a top spins around its spindle. This spinning movement is called Earths rotation. An observer in space will see that Earth requires 23 hours, 59 minutes, and 4 seconds to make one complete rotation on its axis. But because Earth moves around the Sun at the same time that it is rotating, the planet must turn just a little bit more to reach the same place relative to the Sun. Hence the length of a day on Earth is actually 24 hours. At the Equator, the Earth rotates at a speed of about 1,700 km per hour, but at the poles the movement speed is nearly nothing. Earth rotates once on its axis about every 24 hours. To an observer looking down at the North Pole, the rotation appears counterclockwise. From nearly all points on Earth, the Sun appears to move across the sky from east to west each day. Of course, the Sun is not moving from east to west at all; Earth is rotating. The Moon and stars also seem to rise in the east and set in the west. Earths rotation means that there is a cycle of daylight and darkness approximately every 24 hours, the length of a day. Different places experience sunset and sunrise at different times and the amount of daylight and darkness also differs by location. Shadows are areas where an object obstructs a light source so that darkness takes on the form of the object. On Earth, a shadow can be cast by the Sun, Moon, or (rarely) Mercury or Venus. Click image to the left or use the URL below. URL: 
 Question: this french scientist used a pendulum, which help to confirm earths movement
Output (English): foucault