Peser la terre, peser les mondes de la «balance à peser les mondes» de Cavendish (1798) aux repetitions didactiques a l'université

Authors

  • Pierre Lauginie

Abstract

An historical overview is given from the first XVIIIth century experiments «to determine the density of the Earth» to the recent determinations of the newtonian «big G» constant. The dominant role played in this story by the gravitational torsion balance including recent measurements is emphasized through a detailed study of Cavendishs gravitational balance and its important technical, methodological and publishing innovations. In the framework of our «historical experiments » approach of Science and History of Science Teaching, the use of a modern pedagogical version of the Cavendish balance in a university classroom is described. The relationship of the «weighing the Earth» challenge with Astronomy is finally shortly evoked.

Downloads

Published

2009-12-02

Issue

Nova època, vol. 2 (1) : 2009

Section

IV Conference on the history of science and education Antoni Quintana Marí

License

The intellectual property of articles belongs to the respective authors.

On submitting articles for publication to the journal Actes d’Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica, authors accept the following terms:
  1. Authors assign to Societat Catalana d’Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica (a subsidiary of Institut d’Estudis Catalans) the rights of reproduction, communication to the public and distribution of the articles submitted for publication to Actes d’Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica.
  2. Authors answer to Societat Catalana d’Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica (SCHCT) for the authorship and originality of submitted articles.
  3. Authors are responsible for obtaining permission for the reproduction of all graphic material included in articles.
  4. SCHCT declines all liability for the possible infringement of intellectual property rights by authors.
  5. The contents published in the journal, unless otherwise stated in the text or in the graphic material, are subject to a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (by-nc-nd) 3.0 Spain licence, the complete text of which may be found at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/es/deed.en. Consequently, the general public is authorised to reproduce, distribute and communicate the work, provided that its authorship and the body publishing it are acknowledged, and that no commercial use and no derivative works are made of it.
  6. Actes d’Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica is not responsible for the ideas and opinions expressed by the authors of the published articles.