The‘Nut-Drop’Experiment— Bringing Millikan's Challenge to Introductory Students

摘要

One of the difficulties in teaching 20th-century physics ideas in introductory physics discussed in textbooks are difficult or expensive for students to access experimentally. In this paper, we discuss an analogous exercise to Millikan's oil-drop experiment that lets students experience some of the physics involved in the experiment and some of the difficulties Millikan faced.