alt Hacker News> Primary sources:
> Maskelyne’s notes: https://doi.org/10.1098/rstl.1775.0050
> Hutton’s notes: https://doi.org/10.1098/rstl.1778.0034
> Cavendish’s notes on his own experiment: https://doi.org/10.1098/rstl.1798.0022
I got to reproduce Cavendish’s experiment when I was a student. Love that we can easily read the primary source today, archived and indexed by DOI.
Replies
> Using the stars as a reference, Maskelyne’s team found that the plumb lines on either side of the mountain pointed just 0.0152 degrees apart.
I'm really interested in knowing how they could get such a precise measurement (even accounting for errors), especially in the field (outdoor). There's no figure depicting the apparatus they used, I wonder how it looked like.
Sometimes, I just ponder at how ignorant I am. If I was tasked with the same assignment, I'd definitely fail and this was performed 250 ago!
I'd love to know what a sufficiently high precision plumb bob is like. Is it very tall? How on Earth does one calibrate it?