OIL DROP

EXPERIMENTATION
Millikan set up a pair of parallel conducting plates horizontally, one above
the other, with a large electric field between them that could be adjusted. A
fine mist of oil was sprayed into a chamber above the plates. Many of the
droplets would become negatively charged as they picked up some small,
unknown number of electrons as they passed through the nozzle. Some of the
drops then fell through a hole in the top plate and drifted into the region
between the two parallel plates. Lit from the side by an intense light, these
drops glistened when the region was viewed through a microscope.
 With the electric field turned off, Millikan could observe a falling drop
and measure its terminal velocity. This measurement gave him the radius of
the drop, and since he knew the density, he could determine the mass. He
could then switch on the electric field, and adjust it so that the electric force
just precisely balanced the force of gravity on the drop. Knowing the
strength of the field and the mass of the drop, he could calculate the only
unknown, the charge on the drop. This measurement was repeated many
times, and often the same drop would be allowed to rise and fall in the
apparatus again and again, as it picked up and shed electrons.

Working with Fletcher, Millikan showed that the charge of the droplets
were always a whole number multiple of 1.592 x10-19C, the basic unit of
charge. Today, the accepted value is 1.602x10-19C. He published his results in
1913.
PHOTOELECTRIC
EFFECT
Millikan, in 1916, like the other physicists of his day, knew light to be a
wave, not a particle, from the Michelson-Morley experiment. Though
previous studies had verified the existence of a photoelectric effect and the
particle nature of light, Millikan wasn't certain they were rigorous enough to
rule out the possibility of error.
Millikan hypothesized that no emitted electrons would occur if the
photoelectric effect experiment3 were done properly, and he was just the man
to do it. He dutifully performed his experiment in a vacuum so nothing in the
air could alter or enhance the creation of a current, and just imagine his
surprise when he proved the photoelectric effect to be real, instead!
 Millikan took Einstein's theorized equation relating to the kinetic energy
of the emitted electrons, K = hf – P where K is the kinetic energy of the
electron, h is Planck's constant, f is the frequency of the light shown on the
metal, and P is the amount of work (energy) required to extract an electron
from the metal. Planck's constant of h = 6.626 × 10-34 J∙s had been
determined by Max Planck circa 1900, as a quantity central to quantum
physics because it relates the energy of light to its frequency, E = hf and the
wavelength of light to its momentum, p = \frac{h}{\lambda}.

Each term within the equation proposed by Einstein, K = hf – P, refers to amounts of

energy. The kinetic energy of an emitted electron, K, would be zero if an only if the
energy of the incoming light were equal to the work required to extract the electron
from its given metal.
The equation also means that if the light directed at a metal had too low of a frequency,
no electrons would leave the metal, no matter how many light particles, photons, hit it.
Therefore, not only are electrons quantized, but photons.