high vacua, having been led to it by his researches on the radiometer. The particular details of the phenomena observed will be found described in the article Conduction, Electric (§ III.). The main fact discovered by researches of Plücker, Hittorf and Crookes was that in a vacuum tube containing extremely rarefied air or other gas, a luminous discharge takes place from the negative electrode which proceeds in lines normal to the surface of the negative electrode and renders phosphorescent both the glass envelope and other objects placed in the vacuum tube when it falls upon them. Hittorf made in 1869 the discovery that solid objects could cast shadows or intercept this cathode discharge. The cathode discharge henceforth engaged the attention of many physicists. Varley had advanced tentatively the hypothesis that it consisted in an actual projection of electrified matter from the cathode, and Crookes was led by his researches in 1870, 1871 and 1872 to embrace and confirm this hypothesis in a modified form and announce the existence of a fourth state of matter, which he called radiant matter, demonstrating by many beautiful and convincing experiments that there was an actual projection of material substance of some kind possessing inertia from the surface of the cathode. German physicists such as E. Goldstein were inclined to take another view. Sir J. J. Thomson, the successor of Maxwell and Lord Rayleigh in the Cavendish chair of physics in the university of Cambridge, began about the year 1899 a remarkable series of investigations on the cathode discharge, which finally enabled him to make a measurement of the ratio of the electric charge to the mass of the particles of matter projected from the cathode, and to show that this electric charge was identical with the atomic electric charge carried by a hydrogen ion in the act of electrolysis, but that the mass of the cathode particles, or “corpuscles” as he called them, was far less, viz. about 12000th part of the mass of a hydrogen atom.[1] The subject was pursued by Thomson and the Cambridge physicists with great mathematical and experimental ability, and finally the conclusion was reached that in a high vacuum tube the electric charge is carried by particles which have a mass only a fraction, as above mentioned, of that of the hydrogen atom, but which carry a charge equal to the unit electric charge of the hydrogen ion as found by electrochemical researches.[2] P. E. A. Lenard made in 1894 (Wied. Ann. Phys., 51, p. 225) the discovery that these cathode particles or corpuscles could pass through a window of thin sheet aluminium placed in the wall of the vacuum tube and give rise to a class of radiation called the Lenard rays. W. C. Röntgen of Munich made in 1896 his remarkable discovery of the so-called X or Röntgen rays, a class of radiation produced by the impact of the cathode particles against an impervious metallic screen or anticathode placed in the vacuum tube. The study of Röntgen rays was ardently pursued by the principal physicists in Europe during the years 1897 and 1898 and subsequently. The principal property of these Röntgen rays which attracted public attention was their power of passing through many solid bodies and affecting a photographic plate. Hence some substances were opaque to them and others transparent. The astonishing feat of photographing the bones of the living animal within the tissues soon rendered the Röntgen rays indispensable in surgery and directed an army of investigators to their study.
Radioactivity.—One outcome of all this was the discovery by H. Becquerel in 1896 that minerals containing uranium, and particularly the mineral known as pitchblende, had the power of affecting sensitive photographic plates enclosed in a black paper envelope when the mineral was placed on the outside, as well as of discharging a charged electroscope (Com. Rend., 1896, 122, p. 420). This research opened a way of approach to the phenomena of radioactivity, and the history of the steps by which P. Curie and Madame Curie were finally led to the discovery of radium is one of the most fascinating chapters in the history of science. The study of radium and radioactivity (see Radioactivity) led before long to the further remarkable knowledge that these so-called radioactive materials project into surrounding space particles or corpuscles, some of which are identical with those projected from the cathode in a high vacuum tube, together with others of a different nature. The study of radioactivity was pursued with great ability not only by the Curies and A. Debierne, who associated himself with them, in France, but by E. Rutherford and F. Soddy in Canada, and by J. J. Thomson, Sir William Crookes, Sir William Ramsay and others in England.
Electronic Theory.—The final outcome of these investigations was the hypothesis that Thomson’s corpuscles or particles composing the cathode discharge in a high vacuum tube must be looked upon as the ultimate constituent of what we call negative electricity; in other words, they are atoms of negative electricity, possessing, however, inertia, and these negative electrons are components at any rate of the chemical atom. Each electron is a point-charge of negative electricity equal to 3.9 × 10−10 of an electrostatic unit or to 1.3 × 10−20 of an electromagnetic unit, and the ratio of its charge to its mass is nearly 2 × 107 using E.M. units. For the hydrogen atom the ratio of charge to mass as deduced from electrolysis is about 104. Hence the mass of an electron is 12000th of that of a hydrogen atom. No one has yet been able to isolate positive electrons, or to give a complete demonstration that the whole inertia of matter is only electric inertia due to what may be called the inductance of the electrons. Prof. Sir J. Larmor developed in a series of very able papers (Phil. Trans., 1894, 185; 1895, 186; 1897, 190), and subsequently in his book Aether and Matter (1900), a remarkable hypothesis of the structure of the electron or corpuscle, which he regards as simply a strain centre in the aether or electromagnetic medium, a chemical atom being a collection of positive and negative electrons or strain centres in stable orbital motion round their common centre of mass (see Aether). J. J. Thomson also developed this hypothesis in a profoundly interesting manner, and we may therefore summarize very briefly the views held on the nature of electricity and matter at the beginning of the 20th century by saying that the term electricity had come to be regarded, in part at least, as a collective name for electrons, which in turn must be considered as constituents of the chemical atom, furthermore as centres of certain lines of self-locked and permanent strain existing in the universal aether or electromagnetic medium. Atoms of matter are composed of congeries of electrons and the inertia of matter is probably therefore only the inertia of the electromagnetic medium.[3] Electric waves are produced wherever electrons are accelerated or retarded, that is, whenever the velocity of an electron is changed or accelerated positively or negatively. In every solid body there is a continual atomic dissociation, the result of which is that mixed up with the atoms of chemical matter composing them we have a greater or less percentage of free electrons. The operation called an electric current consists in a diffusion or movement of these electrons through matter, and this is controlled by laws of diffusion which are similar to those of the diffusion of liquids or gases. Electromotive force is due to a difference in the density of the electronic population in different or identical conducting bodies, and whilst the electrons can move freely through so-called conductors their motion is much more hindered or restricted in non-conductors. Electric charge consists, therefore, in an excess or deficit of negative electrons in a body. In the hands of H. A. Lorentz, P. K. L. Drude, J. J. Thomson, J. Larmor and many others, the electronic hypothesis of matter and of electricity has been developed in great detail and may be said to represent the outcome of modern researches upon electrical phenomena.
- ↑ See J. J. Thomson, Proc. Roy. Inst. Lond., 1897, 15, p. 419; also Phil. Mag., 1899, [5], 48, p. 547.
- ↑ Later results show that the mass of a hydrogen atom is not far from 1.3×10−24 gramme and that the unit atomic charge or natural unit of electricity is 1.3 × 10−20 of an electromagnetic C.G.S. unit. The mass of the electron or corpuscle is 7.0 × 10−28 gramme and its diameter is 3 × 10−13 centimetre. The diameter of a chemical atom is of the order of 10−7 centimetre.
See H. A. Lorentz, “The Electron Theory,” Elektrotechnische Zeitschrift, 1905, 26, p. 584; or Science Abstracts, 1905, 8, A, p. 603. - ↑ See J. J. Thomson, Electricity and Matter (London, 1904).
