Measurement of the Floor Tilt in Experimental Determination of the Gravitational Constant

Abstract

A prototype of a device with an impact structure for measuring the floor tilt has been built in our laboratory. The mechanical construction and the capacitive transducer of the device are introduced. Experimental results indicate that the floor tilt is about 16 µrad in our cavity laboratory, and the uncertainty ΔG/G caused by such tilt is less than 0.54 parts per million (ppm), so the floor tilt can be reasonably neglected in the experimental determination of the gravitational constant G with the total uncertainty of about 10 ppm.