著者

後藤 美智子

出版者

日本科学史学会

雑誌

科学史研究 (ISSN:21887535)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.27, no.167, pp.152-165, 1988 (Released:2021-09-06)

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Along with the purpose showed in the preceding paper (Journal of History of Science, Japan, No.165, 9(1988)), in this paper, clarified are the processes of Millikan's determination of the absolute value of e. It is noted that these processes are featured by the relation to Stokes' law. At this point of view, especially noted Millikan's purely empirical attitudes to the criticism and the challenge from PerrinRoux since Solvay Congress (1911). These had led Millikan to resolve the discrepancy between Cunningham's theoretical correction term to Stokes' law and Millikan's empirical results. Millikan's investigation of the slip coefficient and the complete law of fall using the oil-drop method brought about the conclusion for his correctness. These investigations completed the final stage of the oil-drop method and furthermore arose the new problems of the kinetic theory. Controlling his measurable objects at will, selecting the limiting factors exactly, and finally converting particular error sources into the new methods were the elements supporting his active attitude, "independently of theory". Millikan's "empirical" method was not only distinguished from the phenomenology in early 20th century but also a struggle against it. These conclusions are essentially opposed to the interpretations by Holton's "thematic presupposition" and Kargon's "conservative mode".

著者

後藤 美智子

出版者

日本科学史学会

雑誌

科学史研究 (ISSN:21887535)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.27, no.166, pp.93-103, 1988 (Released:2021-09-06)

著者

後藤 美智子

出版者

日本科学史学会

雑誌

科学史研究 (ISSN:21887535)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.27, no.165, pp.9-23, 1988 (Released:2021-09-21)

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In this paper, clarified are the motivation leading the development and the contrivance featuring the processes of Millikan's verification of the elementary electrical charge, with the expectation as a case study for the new implication of the experimental researches in early 20th century physics. The controversy on the atomic theory, occurred in St.Louis Congress (1904), and Millikan's own photo-electric effect research drove him to the momentous question as to the reality of "the electron as the natural unit of electricity". Throughout his observational process ―"seeing the electron―, the confidence in and the limiting factors of his experimental apparatus are particularly noteworthy, as well as the active figures in his experimental methods in this period (1906-1911), especially in the process of converting the capture of ions by water droplets, found in the balanced method, into the core of his next oil-drop method. As to the process under consideration, his essential result was the direct verification of the atomic interpretation of both electricity and matter, confirmed independently of the uncertain theory of Stokes' law of fall of a small spherical body through a gas.