The document summarizes the classic experiment conducted by Matthew Meselson and Frank Stahl in 1958 that determined the mechanism of DNA replication. They grew bacteria in a culture containing the heavy isotope nitrogen-15 to produce "heavy" DNA. When these bacteria were then grown in a culture with regular nitrogen-14, the resulting DNA had an intermediate density, indicating that DNA replicates semiconservatively, with each parent strand serving as a template to produce two daughter double helices. Subsequent experiments showed that after a second generation, the DNA was half heavy and half light, confirming the semiconservative model. This elegant experiment provided the first direct evidence that DNA replicates in this manner.