Three Scientific Revolutions : How They Transformed Our Conceptions of Reality (9781633880337) by Schlagel Richard H

Author:Schlagel, Richard H.
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781633880337
Publisher: Random House Digital Dist
Published: 2015-06-18T16:00:00+00:00

As is well known there are two opposing views on the nature of the cathode rays. The earlier one . . . adopted by the English physicists, considers the rays as negatively-charged particles. According to the second one, more representative of the German physicists, especially Goldstein, Wiedemann, Hertz and Lenard, the cathode rays are processes . . . in the aether. (pp. 81–82)

In 1879 Crooks also claimed that “In studying this fourth state of matter we seem at last to have within our grasp . . . the little indivisible particles which with good warrant are supposed to constitute the physical basis of the Universe” (p. 80). But it was J. J. Thomson who determined that the cathode rays were particles, later called “electrons” after measuring their mass/charge ratio, a property of particles not waves. A year previous to Thomson’s announcement of his experimental measurement, Emil Wiechert’s University of Königsberg experiments on cathode rays indicated that they had a mass much lighter than hydrogen, a property of particles. He could have been the first to have discovered a subatomic particle, but for ideological reasons he desisted. As Abraham Pais states: “It is the first time ever that a subatomic particle is mentioned in print and sensible bounds for its mass are given” (p. 82).

It was in the following year, 1897, in April that Thomson presented to the Royal Society of London his experimental determination of the ratio of charge to mass (e/m) of cathode rays that definitely convincing him they were particles:

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