What was the major contribution of Henry Cavendish to the universal law of gravitation? Describe his primary experiment.

Isaac Newton’s universal law of gravitation states that the gravitational pull from any two objects is directly proportional to the product of their masses and indirectly proportional to the square of the distance between them. Newton’s equation for this law utilizes the constant, G, which had no importance to scientists until Henry Cavendish’s experiment. Cavendish used a torsion balance, which has a crossbar that suspends two metal rods that held two lead spheres. There is also another rod with two smaller spheres supported by a thin wire. Since all masses attract the large spheres bring the smaller spheres toward them