How did Millikan's oil drop experiment increase our understanding of sub-atomic particles?

was an extremely gifted experimental physicist, and Nobel Laureate. He measured precisely the charge on the electron, and also verified experimentally the photoelectric effect.

The weighted average is the sum of each individual nuclide, multiplied by its isotopic abundance. So, we simply do the arithmetic: $0.7577xx34.969+0.2423xx36.966 = ???$ amu Then look at to...

And should I multiply $"mass"/cancel"charge"xxcancel"charge"$, I should get an answer of $"mass"$. Let's see: $5.64xx10^-12*kg*cancel(C^-1)xx1.605xx10^-19*cancelC$ $~=1xx10^30*kg$ for a single electron. Well, I got the units of mass, which...

The experiment is famous, and provided a means to measure electronic charge. Millikan and his students must have been consummate experimentalists, and he was able to show that the electric...

It didn't. J. J. Thomson discovered the electron in 1897. He calculated the charge-to-mass ($e$/$m$) ratio of the electron. In 1904, he proposed the plum pudding model, in which the...

it an amazing 12 minute video. worth watching..

The link describes the experiment better than I could do. Their experiment was so sophisticated (and this in 1921) that their reported value, $1.5924(10) xx 10^(-19)*C$ is quite comparable to...

Robert Millikan won the 1923 Nobel Prize in Physics partly for the oil drop experiment. The official citation stated that he received the prize "for his work on the elementary...

Millikan and Fletcher calculated that the charge of the electron was 1.5924 × 10⁻¹⁹ C. See . Their value differed from the currently accepted value of 1.602 176 487 ×10⁻¹⁹...

There was no big surprise in . The big surprise came in his earlier experiments. Here's the story. In 1896, J.J. Thomson had shown that all cathode rays have a...