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From Stan Collins

At school we were told that Robert Millikan, while measuring of the charge on the electron, had discarded one oil droplet which had a charge of one third “because it was obviously wrong”. Really?

Perhaps the best way to find any such fractionally charged particles would be with a modified version of his oil drop experiment. How to get the particle into the detector might be trickier but it could give the opportunity to put particles together in a more controlled way than hurling large numbers at each other and hoping for the best.

The editor writes:

• Martin Perl is trying this at the in Menlo Park, California (21 June 2003, p 44).

Staveley, Cumbria, UK