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Comment by Terr_

That reminds me of the Millikan & Fletcher oil-drop experiment [0], which measured the charge of the electron.

In short, microscopic atomized oil droplets had their fall-time through air measured to figure out their volume, and then a known electric field was used to levitate them. The calculated charge-per-molecule clustered around multiples of a smaller value, which would be the charge of an individual electron.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_drop_experiment

parent Terr_ 2 years ago

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