Re: milli-fletcher ?

[twayburn@juno.com (Thomas L Wayburn)]

On Fri, 5 Dec 1997 12:41:03 -0500 (EST) Michael Moloney
<moloney@nextwork.rose-hulman.edu> writes:
> John,
>
> There was an intriguing article a while back (in Physics Today, I 
> think) about the  
> crucial role Harvey Fletcher played by going to oil drops in what we 
> now know as  
> the Millikan apparatus. Millikan had been using water before.
>
> Seems Millikan forgot to give any credit to Fletcher for this critical 
> improvement  
> in his method of doing the experiment.
> --
>
> Mike       
***********************************************************************

I wonder if not everyone has heard the following story retailed by Stuart
Churchill of Penn.  Subsequent, to Millikan's famous oil-drop experiment
(probably performed by Fletcher who was his slave - er - graduate
student), a long sequence of verifications were made as is proper.   The
values for q* grew almost monotonically to the present accepted value. 
[I hope I'm telling this right because that was the punch line and you
should be smiling either cynically or indulgently according to your
predisposition or inclination.)

We are supposed to grasp the sad truth that Millikan's best and honorable
attempt to measure the charge (q*) on an electron was too low. (And it
damn well had better have been the charge on the electron or I'm going to
be angry with anyone but myself, the great forgetter.)

 Each successive measurement resulted in a higher value of q*, but no one
wanted to error radically, so each observer cooked his data to get more
in line with Millikan after which the next hero of science felt better
about his even higher result than he would have if no one had *ever*
reported a result higher than Millikan's.

Finally, after a series of Arthurian quests for truth, someone
Quixotically reported the value of q* he actually measured, which turned
out to be essentially right.

I guess this is related to the reason we don't want to be the one who
asks the question at the seminar for fear of being thought a fool even
though no one in the room has understood a word for the last ten minutes.

Cheers / Tom