Q 01/05

Robert Millikan was studying which subject when his professor asked him to teach elementary physics?

A) Latin

B) Greek

C) Rhetoric

D) Theology

Answer · why

B) Greek

Greek was Millikan's strong suit, and his professor insisted that anyone who did well in it could teach physics. Millikan spent a summer cramming from...

Q 02/05

Millikan spent a decade trying to disprove which physicist's 1905 particle theory of light?

A) Albert Einstein

B) Niels Bohr

C) Max von Laue

D) Arnold Sommerfeld

Answer · why

A) Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein proposed that light arrives in packets, an idea Millikan was convinced had to be wrong. His own precise results matched the prediction...

Q 03/05

Which name did Millikan coin for the mysterious radiation that grows stronger at high altitude?

A) Gamma rays

B) Beta rays

C) Cosmic rays

D) Cathode rays

Answer · why

C) Cosmic rays

Cosmic rays got their name from Millikan in the 1920s, after he confirmed the radiation was arriving from beyond Earth. Victor Hess had discovered it ...

Q 04/05

Which Caltech physicist cited Millikan's result as a warning about scientists fooling themselves?

A) Kip Thorne

B) Linus Pauling

C) Robert Oppenheimer

D) Richard Feynman

Answer · why

D) Richard Feynman

Richard Feynman told Caltech's 1974 graduates that later experimenters nudged their results toward Millikan's slightly low electron charge. The accept...

Q 05/05

Caltech took Millikan's name off its library in 2021 over his ties to which discredited movement?

A) Eugenics

B) Prohibition

C) Spiritualism

D) Isolationism

Answer · why

A) Eugenics

Eugenics drew Millikan in as a trustee of the Human Betterment Foundation, which promoted compulsory sterilization. The Robert A. Millikan Library is ...