Following his father's death, Henry bought another house in town and also a house in Clapham Common (built by Thomas Cubitt), at that time to the south-west of London. The London house contained the bulk of his library, while he kept most of his instruments at Clapham Common, where he carried out most of his experiments. The most famous of those experiments, published in 1798, was to determine the density of the Earth and became known as the Cavendish experiment. The apparatus Cavendish used for weighing the Earth was a modification of the torsion balance built by geologist John Michell, who died before he could begin the experiment. The apparatus was sent in crates to Cavendish, who completed the experiment in 1797–1798 and published the results.
The experimental apparatus consisted of a torsion balance with a pair of 2-inch 1.61-pound lead spheres suspended from the arm of a torsion balance and two much larger stationary lead balls (350 pounds). Cavendish intended to measure the force of gravitational attraction between the two. He noticed that Michell's apparatus would be sensitive to temperature differences and induced air currents, so he made modifications by isolating the apparatus in a separate room with external controls and telescopes for making observations.
Using this equipment, Cavendish calculated the attraction between the balls from the period of oscillation of the torsion balance, and then he used this value to calculate the density of the Earth. Cavendish found that the Earths average density is 5.48 times greater than that of water. John Henry Poynting later noted that the data should have led to a value of 5.448, and indeed that is the average value of the twenty-nine determinations Cavendish included in his paper. The error in the published number was due to a simple arithmetical mistake on his part. What was extraordinary about Cavendishs experiment was its elimination of every source of error and every factor that could disturb the experiment, and its precision in measuring an astonishingly small attraction, a mere 1/50,000,000 of the weight of the lead balls. The result that Cavendish obtained for the density of the Earth is within 1 per cent of the currently accepted figure.
Cavendishs work led others to accurate values for the gravitational constant (G) and Earths mass. Based on his results, one can calculate a value for G of 6.754 × 10N-m/kg, which compares favourably with the modern value of 6.67428 × 10N-m/kg.
Books often describe Cavendishs work as a measurement of either G or the Earths mass. Since these are related to the Earths density by a trivial web of algebraic relations, none of these sources are wrong, but they do not match the exact word choice of Cavendish, and this mistake has been pointed out by several authors. Cavendishs stated goal was to measure the Earth's density.
The first time that the constant got this name was in 1873, almost 100 years after the Cavendish experiment. Cavendishs results also give the Earths mass.