- The mass of the Earth was first measured with any accuracy (within about 20% of the correct value) in the Schiehallion experiment in the 1770s, and within 1% of the modern value in the Cavendish experiment of 1798.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_mass
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How was the size of Earth first measured?
How is the mass of the Earth measured indirectly?
How did Henry Cavendish determine the mass of the Earth?
What is the Earth mass?
The mass of the Earth was first measured with any accuracy (within about 20% of the correct value) in the Schiehallion experiment in the 1770s, and within 1% of the modern value in the Cavendish experiment of 1798. Contents 1 Unit of mass in astronomy 2 Composition 3 History of measurement 3.1 Early estimates 3.2 Schiehallion experiment
How was the size of Earth first measured? Earth's circumference was first accurately measured more than 2,000 years ago by the Greek astronomer Eratosthenes, who at the time lived in the Egyptian city of Alexandria.
In 1798 Cavendish measured the force between attracting lead spheres with a torsion balance. He knew the masses of the spheres and how far apart they were. He carefully measured the force between them, which allowed him to calculate G. G is incredibly small, 0.0000000000667310 Nm2/kg2. (G is known only to the six decimal places.)
Before Henry Cavendish directly measured the value of the gravitational constant G in 1798, enabling a determination of the earth's mass from the acceleration of gravity g, there were other experimenters who calculated the weight of our planet indirectly.
- No, people had tried earlier, such as the Schiehallion experiment [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schiehallion_experiment ] in 1774, and other expe...
- Before Henry Cavendish directly measured the value of the gravitational constant G in 1798, enabling a determination of the earth's mass from the a...
- No. but his solution is accurate then those who performed to calculate the mass of the earth before him as he was able to find gravitational consta...
- That’s what I understand.
- Yes, because using the value of G, the (known) radius of the Earth and g, he was able to find M. His experiment on measuring (not estimating) G was...
- Mostly, they are determined by measuring them. As Naveed Hussain states, the gravitational acceleration can be measured with a simple pendulum expe...
- He didn’t. The mass of Earth was not determined until 1798. Henry Cavendish made this measurement, using a fantastically sensitive torsion balance...
- The Schiehallion Experiment preceded the Cavendish Experiment by a few years (but was less accurate)Schiehallion experiment - Wikipedia [ https://e...
- Newton didn’t calculate the gravitational constant. Henry Cavendish, who was born after Newton died, was the first person to estimate the constant.
- As other answers have noted, Newton didn’t use algebra, but wrote everything out in extremely long and tedious sentences, in Latin no less. The mod...
Answer (1 of 3): What Newton discovered was that for any gravitationally attracting body of mass M, if you knew the acceleration a due to gravity at distance r from the center of M you could obtain GM as ar².