Political Science 1020E Lecture Notes - Lecture 26: Alpha Particle, William Crookes, Cathode Ray
2 Oct 2016
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
John dalton, and many others, proposed that matter was composed of indivisible atoms. In the second half of the 19th century, experiments indicated that the atom was divisible and that atoms were composed of smaller subatomic particles. Many people experimented with various gas- discharge tubes which were attached to high voltage induction coils. A major difficulty was that air in the tubes effectively stopped particles from reaching the anode from the cathode. When the technology had improved to the point where most of the air could be evacuated from the tube, they discovered some interesting things. Eugene goldstein conducted a series of experiments on what was called the. He gave the name cathode ray to the beam because it originated at the cathode. He found that the cathode rays travelled through thin metal foils and travel much further through air than atoms. Thus, cathode rays were known to be very small in mass.
