Determination of the quark-gluon coupling constant

Presented here is a new method of applying perturbation theory to e⁺e^-→hadrons. Contact between theory and experiment is greatly enhanced by the introduction of a quantity that is both measurable and reliably calculable in perturbation theory. The method yields a value of approximately 700 MeV for Λ, the single parameter that characterizes the color-gluon force.