Robert Millikan
All About Robert Millikan
Robert Millikan's contributions to the science of chemistry
Between 1908 to 1917 Robert Millikan measured the charge of a electron with the following apparatus.In the following experiments, the atomizer from a perfume bottle
was used to spray water or oil droplets into the sample chamber so they fell through a pinhole between two plates of an electric field, where they could then be observed through a microscope.a series of x rays was used to ionize the air by removing electrons from the molecules in the air..By carefully studying these individual droplets, he discovered that the charge of a drop was always an integral multiple of a small, but finite value. His data was then converted to SI units, the charge on a drop was discovered to be some multiple of 1.59 x 10 -19. Combining the following value for the charge on a single electron with the charge to the mass ratio for the electron confirmed Thomson's hypothesis. The mass of an electron was at least 1000 times smaller than the lightest atom.