electrometer
ee-LEK-truh-mee-ter
Definition
An instrument used for detecting and measuring the magnitude of small electric charges or potential differences.
Etymology
The word is derived from the Greek 'elektron' (amber, which produces static electricity) and 'metron' (measure). It entered English in the 18th century as scientific instrumentation for studying electricity began to advance.
In the news
The article mentions that Pierre Curie refined his own piezoelectric electrometer to measure the radiation emitted by pitchblende samples. This precision was crucial for the Curies to realize that pitchblende contained more radioactivity than uranium alone could explain.
Marie Curie and her husband Pierre spent nearly four years boiling down seven tonnes of pitchblende in a leaky Paris shed with no ventilation to isolate one-tenth of a gram of radium chloride, and the notebooks she kept during those years are still so radioacti
Read the full article ↗ScienceBlog.com