South Shields, Tyne and Wear

Mathematical Gazetteer of the British Isles


Harton Pit in South Shields was the site of Airy's 1854 experiment to determine the gravitational constant by timing pendulums at the surface and the bottom of the 1260ft pit. A commemorative plaque was erected in 1992, on the centenary of Airy's death, on a site in South Tyneside General Hospital, near where the pit had been. [1] The experiment was supervised and the calculations were carried out by Edwin Dunkin of the Greenwich Observatory and yielded a mean density of the earth of 6.565 [2]; [3].
See THIS LINK


References (show)

  1. Turnbull, David. Airy plaque unveiled. Astronomy Now 6:11 (Nov 1992) 15. D.
  2. Proctor, Richard A. Weighing the earth. Knowledge 11 (Apr 1888) 123-125 & (May 1888) 151-153.
  3. Stewart, J. J. Weighing the earth. Knowledge (1 Feb 1894) 30-32 & (2 Apr 1894) 88-89.

The Mathematical Gazetteer of the British Isles was created by David Singmaster.
The original site is at THIS LINK.