History and presentation of the Cavendish experiment in textbooks in the 20th century

Abstract

The experiment performed by Henry Cavendish to measure the density of the earth, is in numerous textbooks described as a measurement of the universal gravitational constant, G, even if we know that this was not true. In this paper, a study on how common this "myth" is based on the checklist developed by Leite on a total of 84 textbooks. The prevalence of the myth in most textbooks throughout the 20th century indicates a focus on the contemporary interests of authors and the physics community in presenting the development of physics. An explanation of the prevalence of the myth and a different approach