Robert Millikan’s1 oil drop experiment to determine the charge of the electron has been the subject of considerable controversy.2–4 Despite this, most general chemistry and physics textbooks consider it to be a beautiful and classical experiment in which data from the experiment unambiguously led to the formulation of the fundamental electrical charge (the electron). Millikan himself, despite the controversy with Felix Ehrenhaft, facilitated this impression, and a review of the literature shows that his handling of the data was controversial.5 Most scholars would agree that Millikan’s handling of the data was strongly influenced by his guiding assumption, namely, the existence of the electron and the magnitude of its charge.
Martin Perl,6 Nobel Laureate in Physics (1995), has been working on the isolation of quarks (fractional charges). Perl and his colleagues have used a Millikan style methodology with improvements based on modern technology and stretching the normal...
