George Atwood (source code)

= George Atwood
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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>.<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]{ref}