Accession No

1456

Brief Description

freefall demonstration apparatus, or guinea and feather experiment apparatus, used at the Cavendish Laboratory, 1900 (c)

Origin

Maker

Class

physics

Earliest Date

1900

Latest Date

1900

Inscription Date

Material

metal (brass, white metal); glass

Dimensions

height 630mm; base diameter 140mm

Special Collection

Provenance

Transferred from the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge. It is recorded in the Cavendish Laboratory's 1894 alphabetical catalogue of apparatus on p.83.

Inscription

Description Notes

Apparatus for demonstrating that a feather and a coin will fall at the same speed in a vacuum.
Tapering glass cylinder for mounting on vacuum pump. Glass lid with three columns suspended underneath, each with hinged plate on which feather or coin is mounted. The plates are held in place by a small disc at the bottom of a central column. The disc has a sector cut out so that when it is rotated two of the plates will drop automatically, allowing their contents to fall down the cylinder.

Condition good; complete.

References

Events