ASSIGNMENT COVERSHEET

Complete the details here and insert at the front of your A2B assignment.

NAME: Mohammed Zaiyed Chowdhury

ASSIGNMENT TITLE: Measuring G

NAME OF ACADEMIC TUTOR: Eddie Ross

WORD COUNT:

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Paragraph 1 ~~ 200 words

“Big G" together with the inverse square law are the main elements of the gravitational
theory formulated by Newton.
Small intro of newtons law
Where did G come from
why does G even matter- applications
can metion about the uncertainty in G
why is it difficult to measure G

paragraog 2 ~ 50 wordshg
some of the ways to measure- mention at least 4 ways
paragraph 3 ~big paragraph
describe Cavendish, why was this one good? Compare to others
what who and why cavendish
Cavendish setup
Basis of it, how it works
Maths and easurements needed
paragraph 4~~big
how was cavendish’s experiment improved upon
What is modern accepted value, where did it come from, why is it good?
Paragraph 5
describe other than cavendish
Isaac newton was an ingenious scientist who is known by everyone - scientist or otherwise. Amongst
all his amazing work he is well known for his work on gravity, more specifically, his law of gravitation.
This law states that the gravitational attractive force between two objects is proportional to the
masses of the two objects and inversely proportional to the distance between them squared. But
that’s it. They are proportional. No numerical calculations can be made effectively with just a
combination of relationships and proportionalities. The key which brings this law together is the
Newtonian constant of gravitation:
GMm
F=
r2
In Newton’s original work this constant, G, was not included, in fact it was first included as f in 1873
by Baptistin Baille and Alfred Cornu [1] and was first measured in 1798 by Henry Cavendish. Although
attempts to measure G have been made for such a long time there is still a large uncertainty in its
measurement due to how difficult it is to measure. This difficulty comes from the fact that the
magnitude of the gravitational force is so miniscule that detecting it with high accuracy is no easy
task and requires very intricate and clever experimental setups.
The constant of gravitation is very important, not just in using the above equation. For example, the
Planck units use some natural constants and G is one of them [4]. Therefore, it is important to be able
to obtain a small uncertainty on G. there have been values of G which have been predicted with
theories such as string theory, by obtaining an accurate value for G many of these theories will be
cleared up and brought to light which can result in improved models. [4]
There have been many attempts and experiments to measure G. The attractive force of gravity is tiny
so laser interferometry is often used with another method to measure G because the effect is so
small. There have been methods using simple pendulums and gravimeters but one of the first
methods to be used was the torsion balance in the famous Cavendish experiment.
The Cavendish experiment…………..