Millikan’s oil-drop experiment
What Millikan’s oil-drop experiment means in Physics A-Level, as defined for AQA.
Definition of Millikan’s oil-drop experiment
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Reference: AQA
Tiny charged oil droplets were balanced or moved by an electric field, and their charges were calculated from force balances, clustering around integer multiples of e.
Topics that use Millikan’s oil-drop experiment
Related terms
- Combining gravitational, viscous and electric forces
- Electric force on a charge
- Electric force on a charged droplet in a uniform field
- Elementary charge
- Equilibrium of forces
- Measurement of elementary charge
- Measurement of small charges and quantisation of charge
- Measurement of the elementary charge
Using Millikan’s oil-drop experiment in the exam
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