Physics307L:People/Franco/Franco's Millikan Oil Drop
Millican Oil Drop
SJK 14:58, 17 December 2008 (EST)
Yeah, I saw his apparatus suggestion. Did you look for the stand? Maybe it's lying around somewhere. I also feel like studying the phenomenon of how students seem to use N-1 or N-2 books, with N being the ideal number of books for putting the microscope at eye level. :) Good job on this experiment and statistical comparison with accepted value. Your final value would be better written with less digits to make the comparison easier...also your notation isn't quite right. It would be something more like 1.50(14) X 10^-19 C for the 2 sigma value.
Results and Comments
The results for measuring the charge of an electron is as follows. My Experimental Value is 1.503(.069) x 10^-19 C, and the current accepted value Accepted Value is 1.6021773349e-19 ± 4.80653e-26 C. The percent difference between these two values is 6.15% error. Although my value is not in the 60% confidence interval, it is between σ and 2σ. So my value is in 95% confidence interval. In the data analysis excel sheet, there is a number uncategorized right next to the error of the slope. That number calculates 2σ, which is approximately .1374. So assuming I used this as an uncertainly, the experimental value at (μ +/- 2σ) is 1.503(.137) X 10^-19 C. As mentioned before 2σ is within the range of the accepted value. I do make note that there was a set of data taken one day, and another set of data taken a second day. For convince in calculations, they were merged all together as though they were taken on day one. This may be one of the reasons for the deviation from the accepted value. I would also like to point out Davids idea concerning the apparatus.
