Henry Cavendish prefiguring thermodynamics. Theoretical physicist Dietrich Belitz concluded that in this work Cavendish "got the nature of heat essentially right." As Cavendish performed his famous density of the Earth experiment in an outbuilding in the garden of his Clapham Common estate, his neighbours would point out the building and tell their children that it was where the world was weighed. In honour of Henry Cavendish's achievements and due to an endowment granted by Henry's relative William Cavendish, 7th Duke of Devonshire, the University of Cambridge's physics laboratory was named the Cavendish Laboratory by James Clerk Maxwell, the first Cavendish Professor of
Experimental physics Experimental physics Experimental physics is the category of disciplines and sub-disciplines in the field of physics that are concerned with the observation of physical phenomena and experiments. Methods vary from discipline to discipline, from simple experiments and observations, such as the Cavendish experiment, to more complicated ones, such as the Large Hadron Collider. Experimental physics regroups all the disciplines of physics that are concerned with data acquisition, data–acquisition methods, and the detailed conceptualization (beyond simple thought experiments) and realization of laboratory experiments. It is often put in contrast with theoretical physics, which is more concerned with predicting and explaining the