Discovery of subatomic particles

Discovery of subatomic particles

Main articles: Electron and Plum pudding model

Thomson's illustration of the Crookes tube by which he proved the particle nature of cathode rays. Cathode rays were emitted from the cathode C, sharpened to a beam by slits A and B, then passed through the electric field generated between plates D and E.

When the cathode ray (blue line) passed through the electric field (yellow), it was deflected.

Atoms were thought to be the smallest possible division of matter until 1897 when J.J. Thomson discovered the electron through his work on cathode rays.^[9] A Crookes tube is a sealed glass container in which two electrodes are separated by a vacuum. When a voltage is applied across the electrodes, cathode rays are generated, creating a glowing patch where they strike the glass at the opposite end of the tube. Through experimentation, Thomson discovered that the rays could be deflected by an electric field (in addition to magnetic fields, which was already known). He concluded that these rays, rather than being a form of light, were composed of very light negatively charged particles he called "corpuscles" (they would later be renamed electrons by other scientists).
Thomson believed that the corpuscles emerged from the molecules of gas around the cathode. He thus concluded that atoms were divisible, and that the corpuscles were their building blocks. To explain the overall neutral charge of the atom, he proposed that the corpuscles were distributed in a uniform sea of positive charge; this was the plum pudding model^[10] as the electrons were embedded in the positive charge like plums in a plum pudding (although in Thomson's model they were not stationary). Thomson's illustration of the Crookes tube by which he proved the particle nature of cathode rays. Cathode rays were emitted from the cathode C, sharpened to a beam by slits A and B, then passed through the electric field generated between plates D and E. When the cathode ray (blue line) passed through the electric field (yellow), it was deflected.