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Cavendish's result of 5.4 g·cm −3, 23% bigger than Hutton's, is close to 80% of the density of liquid iron, and 80% higher than the density of the Earth's outer crust, suggesting the existence of a dense iron core.
Cavendish's figure of 5,448 ± 33 kg·m −3 was only 1.2% from the currently accepted value of 5,515 kg·m −3, and his result would not be significantly improved upon until 1895 by Charles Boys. [c] The care with which Cavendish conducted the experiment and the accuracy of his result has led his name to since be associated with it. [21]
As Cavendish performed his famous density of the Earth experiment in an outbuilding in the garden of his Clapham Common estate, his neighbours would point out the building and tell their children that it was where the world was weighed. [38] In honour of Henry Cavendish's achievements and due to an endowment granted by Henry's relative William ...
Newton's books on universal gravitation were published in the 1680s, but the first successful measurement of the Earth's mass in terms of traditional mass units, the Cavendish experiment, did not occur until 1797, over a hundred years later. Henry Cavendish found that the Earth's density was 5.448 ± 0.033 times that of water. As of 2009, the ...
An Earth mass (denoted as M 🜨, M ♁ or M E, where 🜨 and ♁ are the astronomical symbols for Earth), is a unit of mass equal to the mass of the planet Earth. The current best estimate for the mass of Earth is M 🜨 = 5.9722 × 10 24 kg , with a relative uncertainty of 10 −4 . [ 2 ]
In spite of the experimental design being due to Michell, the experiment is now known as the Cavendish experiment for its first successful execution by Cavendish. Cavendish's stated aim was the "weighing of Earth", that is, determining the average density of Earth and the Earth's mass.
Michell's torsion balance, used in the Cavendish experiment. Michell devised a torsion balance for measuring the mass of the Earth, but died before he could use it. His instrument passed into the hands of his lifelong friend Henry Cavendish, who first performed in 1798 the experiment now known as the Cavendish Experiment. Placing two 1-kg lead ...
A major shareholder in the Bank of England with royal connections, Henry Cavendish was a painfully shy character, who made the vital chemical contribution of discovering the first elemental gas. He added some zinc to spirit of salt ( hydrochloric acid ) and collected the evanescence given off as bubbles.