Which British scientist discovered and studied hydrogen, was the first to measure Newton's gravitational constant, and calculated the mass and mean density of the Earth?
"conclude that denser materials exist within Earth's core. This result has been known since the Schiehallion experiment, performed in the 1770s. Charles Hutton in his 1778 report concluded that the mean density of the Earth must be about formula_1 that of surface rock, concluding that the interior of the Earth must be metallic. Hutton estimated this metallic portion to occupy some 65% of the diameter of the Earth. Hutton's estimate on the mean density of the Earth was still about 20% too low, at Henry Cavendish in his torsion balance experiment of 1798 found a value of , within 1%"
"side and emblems representing his discoveries about the force of gunpowder, and the density of the earth on the other. Charles Hutton Charles Hutton FRS FRSE LLD (14 August 1737 – 27 January 1823) was an English mathematician and surveyor. He was professor of mathematics at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich from 1773 to 1807. He is remembered for his calculation of the density of the earth from Nevil Maskelyne's measurements collected during the Schiehallion experiment. Hutton was born on Percy Street in Newcastle-on-Tyne in the north of England, the son of a superintendent of mines, who died when he"
"and precision in his researches into the composition of atmospheric air, the properties of different gases, the synthesis of water, the law governing electrical attraction and repulsion, a mechanical theory of heat, and calculations of the density (and hence the mass) of the Earth. His experiment to measure the density of the Earth has come to be known as the Cavendish experiment. Henry Cavendish was born on 10 October 1731 in Nice, where his family was living at the time. His mother was Lady Anne de Grey, fourth daughter of Henry Grey, 1st Duke of Kent, and his father was"
"measurement, that the density of Earth would be five or six times as great as the density of water, which is surprisingly accurate (the modern value is 5.515). Newton under-estimated the Earth's volume by about 30%, so that his estimate would be roughly equivalent to . In the 18th century, knowledge of Newton's law of gravitation permitted indirect estimates on the mean density of the Earth, via estimates of (what in modern terminology is known as) the gravitational constant. Early estimates on the mean density of the Earth were made by observing the slight deflection of a pendulum near a"
"Charles Hutton Charles Hutton FRS FRSE LLD (14 August 1737 – 27 January 1823) was an English mathematician and surveyor. He was professor of mathematics at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich from 1773 to 1807. He is remembered for his calculation of the density of the earth from Nevil Maskelyne's measurements collected during the Schiehallion experiment. Hutton was born on Percy Street in Newcastle-on-Tyne in the north of England, the son of a superintendent of mines, who died when he was still very young. He was educated at a school at Jesmond, kept by Mr Ivison, an Anglican clergyman. There"
"not be a hollow shell, as some thinkers of the day, including Edmond Halley, had suggested. The Schiehallion experiment, proposed in 1772 and completed in 1776, was the first successful measurement of the mean density of the Earth, and thus indirectly of the gravitational constant. The result reported by Charles Hutton (1778) suggested a density of (4 times the density of water), about 20% below the modern value. This immediately led to estimates on the densities and masses of the Sun, Moon and planets, sent by Hutton to Jérôme Lalande for inclusion in his planetary tables. As discussed above, establishing"
"known for Simpson's rule. Roger Cotes invented the concept of the radian in 1714, but the term was not so-named until 1873. Henry Cavendish, loosely connected with Derbyshire, discovered hydrogen in 1766 (although the element's name came from Antoine Lavoisier), and Cavendish was the first to estimate an accurate mass of the Earth in 1798 in his Cavendish experiment. The Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge is named after a relative. Herbert Spencer coined the term ""survival of the fittest"" in 1864, which was once strongly linked with social Darwinism. Sir John Flamsteed was the first Astronomer Royal of"
"Cavendish, and this mistake has been pointed out by several authors. Cavendish's stated goal was to measure the Earth's density, although his result obviously calculates ""G"" to do so. The first time that the constant got this name was in 1873, almost 100 years after the Cavendish experiment, but the constant was in use since the time of Newton. Cavendish's results also give the Earth's mass. Cavendish's electrical and chemical experiments, like those on heat, had begun while he lived with his father in a laboratory in their London house. Lord Charles Cavendish died in 1783, leaving almost all of"
"By measuring the angle of the rod and knowing the twisting force (torque) of the wire for a given angle, Cavendish was able to determine the force between the pairs of masses. Since the gravitational force of the Earth on the small ball could be measured directly by weighing it, the ratio of the two forces allowed the density of the Earth to be calculated, using Newton's law of gravitation. Cavendish found that the Earth's density was times that of water (due to a simple arithmetic error, found in 1821 by Francis Baily, the erroneous value appears in his paper)."
"churchyard of St Peter and St Mary. Norman Lockyer Sir Joseph Norman Lockyer (17 May 1836 – 16 August 1920), known simply as Norman Lockyer, was an English scientist and astronomer. Along with the French scientist Pierre Janssen he is credited with discovering the gas helium. Lockyer also is remembered for being the founder and first editor of the influential journal ""Nature"". Lockyer was born in Rugby, Warwickshire. After a conventional schooling supplemented by travel in Switzerland and France, he worked for some years as a civil servant in the British War office. He settled in Wimbledon, South London after"
"the University of London until the University of Birmingham was established and received degree awarding powers in its own right. William A. Tilden was professor of chemistry from 1880 to 1894. In September 1893 Francis William Aston began his university studies at the college, where he was taught physics by John Henry Poynting and chemistry by Frankland and Tilden. In 1881 Charles Lapworth became the first professor of geology at the college. In 1891 physics professor John Henry Poynting successfully calculated the mean density of the Earth. The Mason College building housed Birmingham University's Faculties of Arts and Law for"
"the Royal Society. Henry Cavendish was even better known than his father for electrical experiments, and also for other discoveries in physics, including the famous torsion-balance measurement of the mass of the earth. One of Charles Cavendish's experiments with electricity appears to have been an attempt to replicate the plasma glow seen during the early Francis Hauksbee experiment with a semi-vacuum in the friction-generator's glass globe. A recent thesis on plasma arcs mentions Priestley's account of a replication of this by the experimenter Benjamin Wilson (1721–1788): Lord Charles Cavendish Lord Charles Cavendish FRS (17 March 1704 – 28 April 1783)"
"Henry Cavendish Henry Cavendish FRS (; 10 October 1731 – 24 February 1810) was an English natural philosopher, scientist, and an important experimental and theoretical chemist and physicist. Cavendish is noted for his discovery of hydrogen or what he called ""inflammable air"". He described the density of inflammable air, which formed water on combustion, in a 1766 paper ""On Factitious Airs"". Antoine Lavoisier later reproduced Cavendish's experiment and gave the element its name. A notoriously shy man (it has been postulated that he had what is now called childhood autism in the ICD-10), Cavendish was nonetheless distinguished for great accuracy"
"was a well known English physicist and mathematician who was known for his book ""Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica"". He was a main figure in the Scientific Revolution for his laws of motion and universal gravitation. The laws of Newton are said to be the ending point of the Copernican Revolution. Newton used Kepler's laws of planetary motion to derive his law of universal gravitation. Newton's law of universal gravitation was the first law he developed and proposed in his book ""Principia"". The law states that any two objects exert a gravitational force of attraction on each other. The magnitude of"
"Hawking, the founding father of the study of singularities and the university's long-serving Lucasian Professor of Mathematics until 2009; and Lord Martin Rees, the current Astronomer Royal and former Master of Trinity College. John Polkinghorne, also a Cambridge mathematician prior to his entrance into the Anglican ministry, was knighted and received the Templeton Prize for his work reconciling science and religion. Other significant Cambridge scientists include Henry Cavendish, the discoverer of hydrogen; Frank Whittle, co-inventor of the jet engine; Lord Kelvin, who formulated the original Laws of Thermodynamics; William Fox Talbot, who invented the camera, Alfred North Whitehead, Einstein's major"
"beyond the realm of philosophical conjecture and introduced a more structured way of examining nature. Newton, an English mathematician, and physicist, was the seminal figure in the scientific revolution. Drawing on advances made in astronomy by Copernicus, Brahe, and Kepler, Newton derived the universal law of gravitation and laws of motion. These laws applied both on earth and in outer space, uniting two spheres of the physical world previously thought to function independently of each other, according to separate physical rules. Newton, for example, showed that the tides were caused by the gravitational pull of the moon. Another of Newton's"
"become standard until long after Cavendish's time. Indeed, one of the first references to ""G"" is in 1873, 75 years after Cavendish's work. Cavendish expressed his result in terms of the density of the Earth; he referred to his experiment in correspondence as 'weighing the world'. Later authors reformulated his results in modern terms. After converting to SI units, Cavendish's value for the Earth's density, 5.448 g cm, gives which differs by only 1% from the 2014 CODATA value of . For this reason, historians of science have argued that Cavendish did not measure the gravitational constant. Physicists, however, often"
"Norman Lockyer Sir Joseph Norman Lockyer (17 May 1836 – 16 August 1920), known simply as Norman Lockyer, was an English scientist and astronomer. Along with the French scientist Pierre Janssen he is credited with discovering the gas helium. Lockyer also is remembered for being the founder and first editor of the influential journal ""Nature"". Lockyer was born in Rugby, Warwickshire. After a conventional schooling supplemented by travel in Switzerland and France, he worked for some years as a civil servant in the British War office. He settled in Wimbledon, South London after marrying Winifred James. He was a keen"
"him to Britain and is thought to have also been a chemist. William Dittmar Professor William Dittmar FRS FRSE LLD (1833–1892) was a German-born scientist renowned as a chemical analyst. He was based largely in Scotland. He did much analytical work on the findings from the Challenger expedition. He was the first to confirm the Principle of Constant Proportions, a theory first conjectured in 1865 by Johan Georg Forchhammer regarding the major ions of sea-water: that whilst salinity varied across the oceans, the ratios of ionic abundance remained constant. As a result, the Principle is often called ""Dittmar's Principle"" or"
"find the torsion coefficient (""κ"") of the wire, Cavendish measured the natural resonant oscillation period ""T"" of the torsion balance: Assuming the mass of the torsion beam itself is negligible, the moment of inertia of the balance is just due to the small balls: and so: Solving this for ""κ"", substituting into (1), and rearranging for ""G"", the result is: Once ""G"" has been found, the attraction of an object at the Earth's surface to the Earth itself can be used to calculate the Earth's mass and density: Cavendish experiment The Cavendish experiment, performed in 1797–1798 by British scientist Henry"
"at Anglesey Abbey near Cambridge. Christine died in 2015. Hermann Bondi Sir Hermann Bondi (1 November 1919 – 10 September 2005) was an Anglo-Austrian mathematician and cosmologist. He is best known for developing the Steady State theory of the universe with Fred Hoyle and Thomas Gold as an alternative to the Big Bang theory. He contributed to the theory of general relativity,<ref name=""doi10.1023/A:1026726520289""></ref> and was the first to analyze the inertial and gravitational interaction of negative mass. Bondi was born in Vienna, the son of a medical doctor. He was brought up in Vienna, where he studied at the Realgymnasium."
"Science and technology in the United Kingdom Science and technology in the United Kingdom has a long history, producing many important figures and developments in the field. Major theorists from the UK include Isaac Newton whose laws of motion and illumination of gravity have been seen as a keystone of modern science and Charles Darwin whose theory of evolution by natural selection was fundamental to the development of modern biology. Major scientific discoveries include hydrogen by Henry Cavendish, penicillin by Alexander Fleming, and the structure of DNA, by Francis Crick and others. Major engineering projects and applications pursued by people"
"while he kept most of his instruments at Clapham Common, where he carried out most of his experiments. The most famous of those experiments, published in 1798, was to determine the density of the Earth and became known as the Cavendish experiment. The apparatus Cavendish used for weighing the Earth was a modification of the torsion balance built by Englishman and geologist John Michell, who died before he could begin the experiment. The apparatus was sent in crates to Cavendish, who completed the experiment in 1797–1798 and published the results. The experimental apparatus consisted of a torsion balance with a"
"including Isaac Newton, Evangelista Torricelli and Francesco Redi conducted experiments focusing on the flow of water, measuring atmospheric pressure using a barometer and disproving spontaneous generation. Scientific societies and scientific journals emerged and were spread widely through the printing press, touching off the scientific revolution. Newton in 1687 published his ""The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy"", or ""Principia Mathematica"", which set the groundwork for physical laws that remained current until the 19th century. Some modern scholars, including Andrew Cunningham, Perry Williams and Floris Cohen, argue that natural philosophy is not properly called a science, and that genuine scientific inquiry began"
"Physics and an admirer of Cavendish's work. Henry Cavendish Henry Cavendish FRS (; 10 October 1731 – 24 February 1810) was an English natural philosopher, scientist, and an important experimental and theoretical chemist and physicist. Cavendish is noted for his discovery of hydrogen or what he called ""inflammable air"". He described the density of inflammable air, which formed water on combustion, in a 1766 paper ""On Factitious Airs"". Antoine Lavoisier later reproduced Cavendish's experiment and gave the element its name. A notoriously shy man (it has been postulated that he had what is now called childhood autism in the ICD-10),"
"late 17th and early 18th centuries saw the achievements of the greatest figure of the Scientific revolution: Cambridge University physicist and mathematician Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), considered by many to be the greatest and most influential scientist who ever lived. Newton, a fellow of the Royal Society of England, combined his own discoveries in mechanics and astronomy to earlier ones to create a single system for describing the workings of the universe. Newton formulated three laws of motion and the law of universal gravitation, the latter of which could be used to explain the behavior not only of falling bodies"
"the end of the century analytical treatments were rigorous enough to verify the stability of the solar system solely on the basis of Newton's laws without reference to divine intervention—even as deterministic treatments of systems as simple as the three body problem in gravitation remained intractable. In 1705, Edmond Halley predicted the periodicity of Halley's Comet, William Herschel discovered Uranus in 1781, and Henry Cavendish measured the gravitational constant and determined the mass of the Earth in 1798. In 1783, John Michell suggested that some objects might be so massive that not even light could escape from them. In 1739,"
"George Biddell Airy Sir George Biddell Airy (; 27 July 18012 January 1892) was an English mathematician and astronomer, Astronomer Royal from 1835 to 1881. His many achievements include work on planetary orbits, measuring the mean density of the Earth, a method of solution of two-dimensional problems in solid mechanics and, in his role as Astronomer Royal, establishing Greenwich as the location of the prime meridian. His reputation has been tarnished by allegations that, through his inaction, Britain lost the opportunity of priority in the discovery of Neptune. Airy was born at Alnwick, one of a long line of Airys"
"Earth is within 1 percent of the currently accepted figure. Cavendish's work led others to accurate values for the gravitational constant (""G"") and Earth's mass. Based on his results, one can calculate a value for G of 6.754 × 10N-m/kg, which compares favourably with the modern value of 6.67428 × 10N-m/kg. Books often describe Cavendish's work as a measurement of either the gravitational constant (""G"") or the Earth's mass. Since these are related to the Earth's density by a trivial web of algebraic relations, none of these sources are wrong, but they do not match the exact word choice of"
"is used as the standard mass in the astronomical system of units. The value of the gravitational constant was first derived from measurements that were made by Henry Cavendish in 1798 with a torsion balance. The value he obtained differs by only 1% from the modern value. The diurnal parallax of the Sun was accurately measured during the transits of Venus in 1761 and 1769, yielding a value of (9 arcseconds, compared to the present 1976 value of ). From the value of the diurnal parallax, one can determine the distance to the Sun from the geometry of Earth. The"
"the centers of their masses, and ""G"" is the gravitational constant. The first test of Newton's theory of gravitation between masses in the laboratory was the Cavendish experiment conducted by the British scientist Henry Cavendish in 1798. It took place 111 years after the publication of Newton's ""Principia"" and approximately 71 years after his death. Newton's law of gravitation resembles Coulomb's law of electrical forces, which is used to calculate the magnitude of the electrical force arising between two charged bodies. Both are inverse-square laws, where force is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the bodies. Coulomb's"
"Gunter in 1626. He was buried in St Peter Le Poer. Henry Gellibrand Henry Gellibrand (1597–1637) was an English mathematician. He is known for his work on the Earth's magnetic field. He discovered that magnetic declination – the angle of dip of a compass needle – is not constant but changes over time. He announced this in 1635, relying on previous observations by others, which had not yet been correctly interpreted. He also devised a method for measuring longitude, based on eclipses. The mathematical tables of Henry Briggs, consisting of logarithms of trigonometric functions, were published by Gellibrand in 1633"
"to set some values to Jérôme Lalande's planetary tables, which had previously only been able to express the densities of the major solar system objects in relative terms. A more accurate measurement of the mean density of the Earth was made 24 years after Schiehallion, when in 1798 Henry Cavendish used an exquisitely sensitive torsion balance to measure the attraction between large masses of lead. Cavendish's figure of was only 1.2% from the currently accepted value of , and his result would not be significantly improved upon until 1895 by Charles Boys. The care with which Cavendish conducted the experiment"