ABSTRACT
Clinostats are rotational devices that have been in use ever since Julius Sachs invented a clockwork-driven device that rotated growing plants around their growth axis at the end of the 19th century. The initial clinostat systems were mostly used in plant studies and rotated with a relatively slow frequency on the order of one rotation per couple of hours up to about 10 revolutions per minute. The intended averaging of the gravity vector can be accomplished by rotating an object such as a plant, bacterium, or small animal around a horizontal axis. Rotating a physical object such as a growing plant regardless of the orientation relative to the horizontal axis of rotation shows that the radius is not constant. Horizontal rotation affects stems to a lesser extent than leaves that have a larger radius than stems.
