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Joined 2026-09-21 Message
George Atwood Created 2026-10-24 Updated 2026-11-05
A physicist and mathematician who designed the Atwood machine to test the relation between force, mass and acceleration. Two nearly balanced hanging masses drive a pulley: their small mass difference gives a modest driving force, while both masses contribute to the inertia. The slower motion can be timed much more easily than unrestrained free fall. His 1784 treatise presented the apparatus as part of an experimental treatment of Newtonian mechanics.[ref]
A Treatise on the Rectilinear Motion and Rotation of Bodies by George Atwood. 1784 book and apparatus plate; Caltech archival description: weights, pulleys and pendulum-clock timing