In the Millikan Oil Drop Experiment, our goal was to find out the quantized charge of

an electron. The setup was to use a ball-pump spray bottle with a positively
charged oil to spray a fine mist of oil droplets through two horizontal plates, one
positively and one negatively charged. The difference of electric potential between
the plates created an electric field, flowing from the positive side to the negative.
The diagram is as such:

Within this system, the gravitational pull of the drops resists against the electric
force applied from bottom to top. This begs the question: Can an oil drop be
suspended in between the plates? By setting force of the electric field equal to the
oil drops falling force (mass x gravity), we can see that equilibrium can be
achieved:

F E=mg
kq
=mg
r
where k is a constant, q is the charge of the particle, and r is its radius, defined by

r= 3

( 43 )

Supposing that the electric field was then turned off, then the terminal velocity at
which a particle falls through the gaseous medium (air) is determined by this very
ugly equation (youll notice the equation above has been substituted for r)

V t=

Fd

( )
3

m
6
4

where Fd is the drag force,

is the density of the particle and

is the viscosity

of the gas.
By measuring the time it takes for particles to fall through a predetermined
distance, we can calculate the terminal velocity of the individual particles. Armed
with that information, we can then rearrange the nasty formula above to calculate
the mass of each of the oil drops. And now that the mass is known, we can
calculate the radius of the particle, and then the particles charge. Todays methods
show that the charge of an electron is 1.602 x10 -19 Coulombs.
In our experiment, we measured five separate drops rise and fall 3-5 times each,
calculated their mean rise and fall times and velocities, and used the above process
to calculate the radius, mass, and charge.

My calculation of our data showed the following:

Drop

Average
Mass (g) +/-

Average
Radius (m)

Avg Rise
Velocity
(m/s)

Avg Fall
Velocity
(m/s)

Charge (C)

A
B
C
D
E
F

3.54E-19
9.63E-19
1.13E-19
3.18E-19
1.15E-18
5.52E-19

4.73E-07
6.60E-07
6.95E-07
4.56E-07
7.02E-07
5.48E-07

3.07E-04
2.47E-04
3.64E-04
3.64E-04
2.70E-04
2.34E-04

8.99E-05
8.96E-05
4.26E-05
2.73E-05
2.73E-05
4.11E-05

1.95E-19
2.09E-19
1.22E-19
1.71E-19
2.32E-19
1.51E-19