[Physics] How to measure the mass of Earth

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I was wondering how you can measure the mass of Earth. From what I find on the internet, people are using Newton's Laws. But how can you do that ? Newton's Laws are assumed to work because you know a priori the mass of Earth. But you don't know that! Isn't this a circular calculation ? So how can you really measure the mass of Earth?

Best Answer

This is a description of the experiment Cavendish performed at the end of the 18th Century to measure the density of the Earth:

Cavendish put two lead balls on either end of a long bar. He hung the bar at its center from a long twisted wire with known torque. Then, he placed two really massive objects at exactly identical fixed distances from the center of the torsion bar, in the plane of the torsion bar and at right angles to the bar at rest. The balls were attracted and started the wire twisting, but their inertia caused them to overshoot the equilibrium position of the wire. The bar wound up oscillating, and Cavendish measured the rate of oscillation to determine the torsion coefficient of the wire.

With this, he was able to determine the force attracting the balls to each other, which he used to set up a proportion to derive the density of the Earth. Here is a description of the experiment: http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2007/ph210/chang1/, as well as a derivation of the gravitational constant, Big G, that you can perform: http://www.school-for-champions.com/science/gravitation_cavendish_experiment.htm#.VUFS80uiKlI.

One can use the density derived by Cavendish, and the diameter of the Earth (which has been known since Eratosthenes in ancient Greece) to compute the mass of the Earth.

To find the mass of the Earth using the modern form of Newton's Law of Gravitation, you may enploy Little g, the Earth's gravitational acceleration, which is determined by dropping an object, any object, and measuring its acceleration toward the Earth. You do not have to know the mass of the Earth to measure an object's acceleration toward the Earth. Then, you plug the acceleration (9.81 m/sec^2), and the mass of the dropped object into Newton's definition of Force (F=ma), to find the force (F) that the Earth exerts (gravitational acceleration) at the height from which you dropped the object.

Now you know everything in the equation F = g * (m1*m2)/r^2, except for m2, the mass of the Earth. Solve for m2!

Although Newton did not know the magnitude of the gravitational constant (Big G), the form of his equation, which sets the force of gravity inversely proportional to the square of the distance between objects, was rapidly accepted by scientists because it agrees with the motions of the planets as measured by Keppler.

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