Evolution in Science and Religion - Robert and similar items

Evolution in Science and Religion by Robert Andrews Millikan New Haven: Yale University Press, 1927 First edition, inscribed by this great and very important physicist who was also a devoted Christian. The inscription on the front free endpaper reads: 'To Rev. Charles Gould with the compliments of R. A. Millikan' This book is in very good condition, with a gilt spine and with dark blue boards and deckled page edges on the side. Hinges are unbroken, endpapers are clean, but for the inscription by the author on the front free endpaper. The last fixed endpaper has a small lightly written pencil notation at top edge which is written "Presentation Copy O.P." and there is a small circular "Oxford Bookshop" stamp in the lower right corner, neither of which is in any way obtrusive.There are margin pen lines (not affecting the text at all) along three sentences on page 82 and the same on the first three paragraphs on page 83 and the same of five lines on page 84. 95 pages. Robert Andrews Millikan (March 22, 1868 ? December 19, 1953) was an American experimental physicist honored with the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1923 for the measurement of the elementary electric charge and for his work on the photoelectric effect. In 1909 Millikan began a series of experiments to determine the electric charge carried by a single electron. He began by measuring the course of charged water droplets in an electric field. The results suggested that the charge on the droplets is a multiple of the elementary electric charge, but the experiment was not accurate enough to be convincing. He obtained more precise results in 1910 with his famous oil-drop experiment in which he replaced water (which tended to evaporate too quickly) with oil. Charge of the electron Professor Millikan took sole credit, in return for Harvey Fletcher claiming full authorship on a related result for his dissertation. Millikan went on to win the 1923 Nobel Prize for Physics , in part for this work, and Fletcher kept the agreement a secret until his death. After a publication on his first results in 1910, contradictory observations by Felix Ehrenhaft started a controversy between the two physicists. After improving his setup, Millikan published his seminal study in 1913. The elementary charge is one of the fundamental physical constants, and accurate knowledge of its value is of great importance. His experiment measured the force on tiny charged droplets of oil suspended against gravity between two metal electrodes. Knowing the electric field, the charge on the droplet could be determined. Repeating the experiment for many droplets, Millikan showed that the results could be explained as integer multiples of a common value (1.592 10?19 coulomb), which is the charge of a single electron. That this is somewhat lower than the modern value modern value of 1.602 176 53(14) x 10?19 coulomb is probably due to Millikan's use of an inaccurate value for the viscosity of air Although at the time of Millikan's oil-drop experiments it was becoming clear that there exist such things as subatomic particles, not everyone was convinced. Experimenting with cathode rays in 1897, J. J. Thomson had discovered negatively charged 'corpuscles', as he called them, with a charge-to-mass ration 1840 times that of a hydrogen ion. Similar results had been found by George FitzGerald and Walter Kaufmann . Most of what was then known about electricity and magnetism, however, could be explained on the basis that charge is a continuous variable; in much the same way that many of the properties of light can be explained by treating it as a continuous wave rather than as a stream of photons. The beauty of the oil-drop experiment is that as well as allowing quite accurate determination of the fundamental unit of charge, Millikan's apparatus also provided a 'hands on' demonstration that charge is actually quantized. The General Electric Company's Charles Steinmetz , who had previously thought that charge is a continuous variable, became convinced otherwise after working with Millikan's apparatus. Track Page Views With Auctiva's FREE Counter