top of a disk so that it makes a fixed angle with the disk. The spring is struck so that it oscillates in a plane. When the disk is turned, the plane of oscillation changes just like the one of a Foucault pendulum at latitude . Similarly, consider a nonspinning, perfectly balanced bicycle wheel mounted on a disk so that its axis of rotation makes an angle with the disk. When the disk undergoes a full clockwise revolution, the bicycle wheel will not return to its original position, but will have undergone a net rotation of . Foucault-like precession is observed in a virtual system wherein a massless particle is constrained to remain on a rotating plane that is inclined with respect to the axis of rotation. Spin of a relativistic particle moving in a circular orbit precesses similar to the swing plane of Foucault pendulum. The relativistic velocity space in Minkowski spacetime can be treated as a sphere S3 in 4-dimensional Euclidean space with imaginary radius and imaginary timelike coordinate. Parallel transport of polarization vectors along such sphere gives rise to Thomas precession, which is analogous to the rotation of the swing plane of Foucault pendulum due to parallel transport along a sphere S2 in 3-dimensional Euclidean space. In physics, the evolution of such systems is determined by geometric phases. Mathematically they are understood through parallel transport. Foucault pendulums around the world There are numerous Foucault pendulums at universities, science museums, and the like throughout the world. The United Nations General Assembly Building at the United Nations headquarters in New York City has one. The Oregon Convention Center pendulum is claimed to be the largest, its length is approximately , however, there are larger ones listed in the article, such as the one in Gamow Tower at the University of Colorado (39.3 m). There used to be much longer pendulums, such as the pendulum in Saint Isaac's Cathedral, Saint Petersburg, Russia. South Pole The experiment has also been carried out at the South Pole, where it was assumed that the rotation of the Earth would have maximum effect. A pendulum was installed in a six-story staircase of a new station under construction at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. It had a length of and the bob weighed . The location was ideal: no moving air could disturb the pendulum. The researchers confirmed about 24 hours as the rotation period