Abstract. Advances in crystal growth technology together with advances in preferential etching techniques may make it possible to produce a nearly perfect single crystal of silicon in the form of a 111 tetrahedron. The density homogeneity of such an artifact together with the high precision to which its centre of mass could be located with respect to its faces would suggest its use as an attracting mass in experiments to determine the gravitational constant G. In this paper a closed-form expression for the gravitational field of a 111 tetrahedron is derived.

Print publication: Issue 2 (1986)
Received 5 July 1985