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Millikan oil-drop experiment
(redirected from Oil-drop experiment)

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Millikan oil-drop experiment

First method for direct measurement of the electric charge of a single electron, originally performed in 1909 by Robert Millikan. He used a microscope to measure the rate of descent of tiny oil droplets directed through the top of a box. By halting the descent of droplets carrying their own electric charge by means of precisely adjusting the voltage between the box's metal top and bottom, he discovered that the electric charges on the drops were all whole-number multiples of a lowest value, the elementary electric charge itself, and thus that electric charge exists in basic natural units.

Millikan oil-drop experiment [′mil·ə·kən ′ȯil‚dräp ik‚sper·əmənt]
(atomic physics)
A method of determining the charge on an electron, in which one measures the terminal velocities of rise and fall of oil droplets in an electric field after the droplets have picked up charge from ionization in the surrounding gas produced by an x-ray beam.
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44 The Millikan oil-drop experiment was the first to make what important measurement?
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