Talk:Oil-drop experiment

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[edit] Misleading summary

I believe the summary might be misleading as is most popular literature on the subject. In contrast in the method section it's shown that Millikan did not balance the electric and gravitational forces on each drop, doing this would be really difficult, instead he observed the oil drops while under the effect of a known electric field and gravity, and also under gravity alone. I know that the other section is not reference enough, I'm currently working on some advances on this experiment (making it more accurate, easy and cheap), and on the papers Millikan published, the method reflected it's one I advocate. JunCTionS 18:10, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Difficult doesn't begin to explain it.  :) Millikan must have had the patience of a saint, I swear. -- Popefelix 00:17, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'm also striking out the broken links in the article, and adding one or two of my own. -- Popefelix 00:26, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I updated one of the broken links, and e-mailed Dr. Covault to see if he has a current URL for his oil drop lab. In the meantime, the Covault link has been deleted. -- Popefelix 00:47, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] type of oil?

The oil used is the type that is usually used in vacuum apparatus. This is because this type of oil has an extremely low vapour pressure.

Would it be possible to be more specific? There's nothing helpful at vacuum. Chick Bowen 04:51, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Nowadays in student labs liquid latex is used, HTH. --Bmalicoat 05:30, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Charge screening?

Wouldn't the QED concept of charge screening invalidate oil-drop experiments? That implies that the real charge of an electron is actually significantly larger than what such an experiment could measure, and that one was only measuring the effective charge at some particular distance. -76.209.50.77 17:42, 27 October 2006 (UTC)