WIRED ScienceYou Can Find the Gravitational Constant with String and a Mountain
There are quite a few fundamental constants. These are things like the speed of light (c) the charge on an electron (e), and the Planck constant (h). These constants are determined with some type of interesting experiment. The first values of these constants were often difficult to find—the speed of light, for example, was calculated by tracking the moons of Jupiter. Of course, now we have much better methods to get a very precise value for the speed of light.
