i013Fig. 13
Fig. 13
Fig. 13
These results establish with absolute conclusiveness the correctness of the assertion that the apparent value of the electron is not in general a function of the gas in which the particle falls, of the materials used, or of the radius of the drop on which it is caught, even when that drop is of mercury, and even when it is as small as some of those with which Dr. Ehrenhaft obtained his erratic results.If it appears to be so with his drops, the cause cannot possibly be found in actual fluctuations in the charge of the electron without denying completely the validity of my results. But these results have now been checked, in their essential aspects, by scores of observers, including Dr. Ehrenhaft himself. Furthermore, it is not my results alone with which Dr. Ehrenhaft’s contention clashes. The latter is at variance also with all experiments like those of Rutherford and Geiger and Regener on the measurement of the charges carried by- and-particles, for these are infinitely smaller than any particles used by Dr. Ehrenhaft; and if, as he contends, the value of the unit out of which a charge is built up is smaller and smaller the smaller the capacity of the body on which it is found, then these-particle charges ought to be extraordinarily minute in comparison with the charges on our oil drops. Instead of this, the charge on the-particle comes out exactly twice the charge which I measure in my oil-drop experiments.
While then it would not be in keeping with the spirit or with the method of modern science to make any dogmatic assertion about the existence or non-existence of a sub-electron, it can be asserted with entire confidence that there has not appeared up to the present a scrap of evidence for the existence of charges smaller than the electron. If all of Dr. Ehrenhaft’s assumptions as to the nature of his particles were correct, then his experiments would mean simply that Einstein’s Brownian-movement equation is not of universal validity and that the law of motion of minute charged particles is quite different from that which he has assumed. It is exceedingly unlikely that either ofthese results can be drawn from his experiments, for Nordlund[132]and Westgren[133]have apparently verified the Einstein equation in liquids with very much smaller particles than Dr. Ehrenhaft uses; and, on the other hand, while I have worked with particles as small ascm. and with values ofas large as 135, which is very much larger than any which appear in the work of Dr. Ehrenhaft and his pupils, I have thus far found no evidence of a law of motion essentially different from that which I published in 1913, and further elaborated and refined in 1923.
There has then appeared up to the present time no evidence whatever for the existence of a sub-electron. The chapter having to do with its discussion is now considered for the present at least to have been closed,[134]but it constitutes an interesting historical document worthy of study as an illustration on the one hand of the solidity of the foundations upon which the atomic theory of electricity now rests, and on the other hand of the severity of the gauntlet of criticism which new results must run before they gain admission to the body of established truth in physics.