True, but I wanted this to be something anyone could do with equipment they might already have lying around and also get a feel for what gravity is actually doing.
Switching on a machine that displays "9.8m/s²" isn't that much removed from looking it up in a book.
Well, sure, but this is HN ... timing the fall of an object is one thing (Gallileo deserves a mention or three here).
"Measuring gravity" suggests more continuous measurement, such as what myself and various scaly mates used to do 40 odd years past with LaCoste and Romberg gravity meters that may or may not have had a shop built element to them for use in light aircraft to run grids across country scale areas.
A gravimeter is an instrument used to measure gravitational acceleration.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravimeter#Gravimeters
True, but I wanted this to be something anyone could do with equipment they might already have lying around and also get a feel for what gravity is actually doing.
Switching on a machine that displays "9.8m/s²" isn't that much removed from looking it up in a book.
Well, sure, but this is HN ... timing the fall of an object is one thing (Gallileo deserves a mention or three here).
"Measuring gravity" suggests more continuous measurement, such as what myself and various scaly mates used to do 40 odd years past with LaCoste and Romberg gravity meters that may or may not have had a shop built element to them for use in light aircraft to run grids across country scale areas.
https://www.aseg.org.au/governance/history/equipment-museum/...
Also: Operation of LaCoste and Romberg Gravimeter at sensitivity approaching the thermal fluctuation limits (1966) https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/JZ071i02...