  One of the key elements to understanding the structure of the nucleon is the
role of its quark-antiquark sea in its ground state properties such as charge,
mass, magnetism and spin. In the last decade, parity-violating electron
scattering has emerged as an important tool in this area, because of its
ability to isolate the contribution of strange quark-antiquark pairs to the
nucleon's charge and magnetism. The SAMPLE experiment at the MIT-Bates
Laboratory, which has been focused on s-sbar contributions to the proton's
magnetic moment, was the first of such experiments and its program has recently
been completed. In this paper we give an overview of some of the experimental
aspects of parity-violating electron scattering, briefly review the theoretical
predictions for strange quark form factors, summarize the SAMPLE measurements,
and place them in context with the program of experiments being carried out at
other electron scattering facilities such as Jefferson Laboratory and the Mainz
Microtron.
