  In this paper, we calculate the gravitational acceleration by using simple
pendulums within the designated World Pendulum Alliance: a network constituted
by fourteen institutions in eight countries, each provided by a pendulum that
can be accessed remotely via the Internet. As a pedagogical option for remote
laboratory experiences, we show how to access them and measure the pendulum's
period for $N$ oscillations. We discuss the role of the repetitions and samples
to minimize the experimental uncertainty, and by using the averaged value of
the period, we compute the gravitational acceleration locally. Also, we present
the corrections due to the moment of inertia of the system. Finally, by taking
into account the geographical location of each pendulum, we report gravity's
dependence on latitude, longitude, and altitude by discussing the implications
on the Earth's shape. We hope this tool will be helpful for introductory and
university physics courses due to its remote access features and its relation
to fundamental concepts.
