Well, tidal power plants exist. If you want a smaller device that will work in principle, hang a ball on a spring from the ceiling. When the moon passes overhead, the ball will go up. Then it’s up to you to translate that to rotary motion. The effect will be tiny though, so you’ll need a really lossless spring, a really stable building, and maybe a vacuum filled room :-)
As for Foucault’s pendulum, which works based on rotation of the Earth (not tides), I don’t think you can extract energy from such things even in principle.
To detect tides with a symmetrical wheel, start it spinning. It will experience a gyroscopic torque due to tidal forces. This is actually the same mechanism that causes the earth’s axis to precess.
Engage!
Possibly relevant (crazy idea about extracting angular momentum from the Earth)
Well, tidal power plants exist. If you want a smaller device that will work in principle, hang a ball on a spring from the ceiling. When the moon passes overhead, the ball will go up. Then it’s up to you to translate that to rotary motion. The effect will be tiny though, so you’ll need a really lossless spring, a really stable building, and maybe a vacuum filled room :-)
As for Foucault’s pendulum, which works based on rotation of the Earth (not tides), I don’t think you can extract energy from such things even in principle.
To detect tides with a symmetrical wheel, start it spinning. It will experience a gyroscopic torque due to tidal forces. This is actually the same mechanism that causes the earth’s axis to precess.
When you speed a wheel, you have to input some energy into it. And then, doe to the friction, you have to input more energy.
To have a higher coolness factor, it would be nice to harvest all the energy from the Sun-Earth-Moon system.