# How is spin measured experimentally ?

1. Feb 11, 2014

### xortdsc

Hi,

this probably has been answered somewhere here already, but I was unable to find it.
Could someone explain how the spin of a particle is actually measured in an experiment ? Most interesting to me is how the 3d spin vector for 1/2 spin particles is determined experimentally.

Cheers.

Last edited: Feb 11, 2014
2. Feb 11, 2014

Staff Emeritus
It is impossible to measure a 3d spin vector - i.e. all three components - of anything.

3. Feb 11, 2014

### abitslow

4. Feb 13, 2014

### xortdsc

thank you. the Stern-Gerlach Experiment was helpful indeed.
{"extraction_info": {"found_math": false, "script_math_tex": 0, "script_math_asciimath": 0, "math_annotations": 0, "math_alttext": 0, "mathml": 0, "mathjax_tag": 0, "mathjax_inline_tex": 0, "mathjax_display_tex": 0, "mathjax_asciimath": 0, "img_math": 0, "codecogs_latex": 0, "wp_latex": 0, "mimetex.cgi": 0, "/images/math/codecogs": 0, "mathtex.cgi": 0, "katex": 0, "math-container": 0, "wp-katex-eq": 0, "align": 0, "equation": 0, "x-ck12": 0, "texerror": 0, "math_score": 0.9863842725753784, "perplexity": 1454.2071193314778}, "config": {"markdown_headings": true, "markdown_code": true, "boilerplate_config": {"ratio_threshold": 0.3, "absolute_threshold": 10, "end_threshold": 15, "enable": true}, "remove_buttons": true, "remove_image_figures": true, "remove_link_clusters": true, "table_config": {"min_rows": 2, "min_cols": 3, "format": "plain"}, "remove_chinese": true, "remove_edit_buttons": true, "extract_latex": true}, "warc_path": "s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2018-30/segments/1531676589710.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20180717105812-20180717125812-00229.warc.gz"}