4 ms·

For that to happen, you would have to be very unlucky: all of your measurements would have to be 2e, 4e, 6e, etc. If a 3e or 5e sneaked in there, you'd realize

For that to happen, you would have to be very unlucky: all of your measurements would have to be 2e, 4e, 6e, etc. If a 3e or 5e sneaked in there, you'd realize that the charge was e, not 2e. With enough measurements, you can be confident that you've hit all the expected multiples of the quantum.

db48x 2y ago
Not quite so. They did end up measuring a multiple of the fundamental electric charge. The experiment really measured 3e, 6e, 9e, etc. It turns out that the electron and proton have an electric charge 3× bigger than that of a quark. Since the experiment didn’t generate any free quarks, nobody noticed for years. Even today the mistake persists and school children are taught, unironically, that down quarks have ±⅓ of the fundamental indivisible unit of electric charge and that up quarks have ±⅔e.
- wholinator2 2y ago
  No need to nitpick, the original comment states perfectly accurately that he was measuring the fundamental charge _of the electron_, from which the constant e is derived. We've been using e to mean _electron_ charge for a very long time. Where do you get the idea that constant has anything to do with quarks?
  - db48x 2y ago
    https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/992/402/c35.gif https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/992/402/c35... But seriously, it really is time to fix all the chemistry textbooks so that the charge of the electron is +3 instead of −1.
    - empyrrhicist 2y ago
      Why, to make all that quark chemistry a bit easier?
      - db48x 2y ago
        Because electric charge is quantized, so measuring it in thirds is just dumb.
        ForOldHack 2y ago
        "I see a clock, but I cannot envision the clockmaker. The human mind is unable to conceive of the four dimensions, so how can it conceive of a God, before whom a thousand years and a thousand dimensions are as one?" -Albert Einstein It would have revealed a lower layer of higher understanding. No one has been able to calculate the mass of a quark: "Nobody has seriously calculated theoretically a quark mass from first principles. So there is no issue of agreement with experiment. They are parameters in experimental fits, but sometimes remarkably consistent across a broad range of experiments-- and the QCD/EW calculations using them as inputs. If someone pretends to know their origin, he/she is bluffing." But the exercise is extraordinary!

db48x 2y ago

Not quite so. They did end up measuring a multiple of the fundamental electric charge. The experiment really measured 3e, 6e, 9e, etc. It turns out that the electron and proton have an electric charge 3× bigger than that of a quark. Since the experiment didn’t generate any free quarks, nobody noticed for years. Even today the mistake persists and school children are taught, unironically, that down quarks have ±⅓ of the fundamental indivisible unit of electric charge and that up quarks have ±⅔e.

wholinator2 2y ago
No need to nitpick, the original comment states perfectly accurately that he was measuring the fundamental charge _of the electron_, from which the constant e is derived. We've been using e to mean _electron_ charge for a very long time. Where do you get the idea that constant has anything to do with quarks?
- db48x 2y ago
  https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/992/402/c35.gif https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/992/402/c35... But seriously, it really is time to fix all the chemistry textbooks so that the charge of the electron is +3 instead of −1.
  - empyrrhicist 2y ago
    Why, to make all that quark chemistry a bit easier?
    - db48x 2y ago
      Because electric charge is quantized, so measuring it in thirds is just dumb.
      - ForOldHack 2y ago
        "I see a clock, but I cannot envision the clockmaker. The human mind is unable to conceive of the four dimensions, so how can it conceive of a God, before whom a thousand years and a thousand dimensions are as one?" -Albert Einstein It would have revealed a lower layer of higher understanding. No one has been able to calculate the mass of a quark: "Nobody has seriously calculated theoretically a quark mass from first principles. So there is no issue of agreement with experiment. They are parameters in experimental fits, but sometimes remarkably consistent across a broad range of experiments-- and the QCD/EW calculations using them as inputs. If someone pretends to know their origin, he/she is bluffing." But the exercise is extraordinary!