J. J. Thompson essays

J. J. Thompson essays J. J. Thomson was born in cheetham, Manchester. On December 18, 1856. Thomson is known as the man who discovered and identified electrons. He studied at Owen's college, Manchester in 1870. In 1876 he studied in at Trinity College, Cambridge as a minor scholar. In 1884-1918 at the age of 27 he became Cavendish Professor of Experimental Physics and head of the Cavendish Laboratory. He was Honorary Professor of Physics, Cambridge and Royal Institution, London. Thomson's early interest in atomic structure was reflected in his treatise on the motion of Vortex Rings that won him the Adams prize in1884. In 1896, Thomson visited America to give a course of four lectures, which summarized his current researches at Princeton. The lectures were published as discharge of electricity through gases (1897). On his return from America, he achieved the best work of his life. An original study of cathode rays culminating in the discovery of the electron, this was announced to the royal. Institution on Fri. April 30,1897. Returned to America in 1904 to discuss six lectures on electricity and matter at Yale University. The discussion contained important suggestions as to the structure of the atom. He discovered a method for separating different kinds of atoms and molecules by the positive rays, and idea developed by Aston, Dempster and others towards the discovery of many isotopes. Thomson subsequently turned his attention to positively charged ions. His research showed that neon gas was made up of a combination of two different types of ion, each with different charge, mass, or both. He di d this by using magnetic and electric fields to deflect the stream of positive ions of neon gas onto two different types of a photographic plate. The demonstration clearly pointed to the possibility that ordinary elements might exist as isotopes (varieties of atoms of the same element, which have the same atomic number but dif ...