Physics307L:People/Cochran/E-m ratio

Summary
In this lab, we measured the mass-to-charge ratio of the electron by measuring the radii of electron beams at different currents and voltages. We used Hewlett Packard DC Power Supply (Model 6384A, 4-5.5V, 0-8A), an e/m experimental apparatus (Model TG-13), a SOAR corporation DC Power Supply (Model 7403, 0-36V, 3A), and a Gelman Instrument Company Deluxe Regulated Power Supply (500V, 100mA). notebook entry

Results
We calculated the charge-to-mass ratio to be e/m = 1.539391 +/- 0.0261801*1011, with a percent error of %error = 12.351%.

Conclusion
The large percent error in this experiment is, I believe, due to the extreme difficulty we had in accurately reading the radius measurement using the mirror setup. However, our result was still in the same order of magnitude as the accepted result, which I think shows that our procedure was not intrinsically flawed. Perhaps having taken more measurements would have eliminated some of this error.