Joseph John Thomson Assistants: Dylan C. Courtni F.

Joseph John Thomson humble beginnings… Known to his close friends as Little JJ, Joseph Thomson made his entry into the world on December 18, His family resided in a humble abode in Cheetam Hall, a suburb of Manchester, England. As a child Little JJ enjoyed many games and made advanced observations about the world around him. Sadly his father died when JJ Thomson was 16.

Beginning Education Taking first place in his science fairs throughout all elementary school his parents and teachers knew he was destined for greatness in the field off science. One question that haunted Little JJ as a child was what was the foundation to all human life? What structure created everything around is in the world?

Further Education Enrolled at Owens College in Manchester in In 1876 JJ Thomson entered Trinity College, Cambridge as a minor scholar. After four short years JJ Thomson had become a Fellow of Trinity College and remained that way for the rest of his life.

Experiment that led to the discovery James Clerk Maxwell developed the basic equation for electromagnetism which Thomson studied extensively. Some scientists took glass rods with rods embedded in opposite sides and put a high voltage across these rods. When they pumped out the air something began to glow. Jean Perrin studied the glowing particles and concluded they had a negative charge but were very small gas particles…. WRONG Thomson wondered what were the glowing particles.

Thomson’s experiments Experiment 1- Thomson took his cathode ray tube and had atoms in the form of rays enter the tube. He found the glowing particles held a high negative charge, but when he tried to get the particles to bend away from the ray by using a magnet he found that the particles and the ray must somehow be stuck together.

Experiment 2 Thomson began understanding that a charge particle will curve through an electrical field unless it is surrounded by a conductor. (ex- copper) The cathode rays were not bending because the traces of gas were being turned into a conductor by the rays. When Thomson removed the gas the cathode rays did bend.

Experiment 3 Thomson could not measure the mass or electric charge of the tiny glowing atom, but he could measure how much the rays were bent by an electrical field and how much energy they carried. When he found the ratio with these two pieces information he had solved the ratio mass of these “mysterious particles.”

Contribution to the atom Thomson’s conclusion: "we have in the cathode rays matter in a new state, a state in which the subdivision of matter is carried very much further than in the ordinary gaseous state: a state in which all matter... is of one and the same kind; this matter being the substance from which all the chemical elements are built up.“ JJ Thomson had discovered the corpuscles (electron) as a separate part of an atom.

Thomson’s model of the atom Thomson believed atoms were like raisin bread. That electrons were randomly spread through a cloud of massless positively charged material. This was know as the “plum pudding or raisin bread theory.”

The Discovery of electrons and the advancement of the atom Thomson’s conclusions: 1) Cathode rays are charged particles (which he called "corpuscles"). 2) These corpuscles are constituents of the atom. 3) These corpuscles are the only constituents of the atom. Corpuscles later named electrons were discovered through JJ Thomson’s experiments with the assistance of many other scientists. His last conclusion turned out to be false because other noted scientists have discovered there are protons, neutrons, and electrons that make up an atom.

Awards Joseph John Thomson won many awards such as: received Nobel Peace Prized for Physics -Wrote numerous books such as: Treatise on the Motion of Vortex Rings, Notes on Recent Researches in Electricity and Magnetism, and The Electron in Chemistry. -Recipient of Order of Merit and knighted in Received Royal Hughes Medals in 1894 and Awarded Hodgkinsons medal (Smithsonian Institute) in Had honorary doctorate degrees in many colleges including: Universities of Oxford, Dublin, London, Victoria, Columbia, Cambridge, Durham, Birmingham, Göttingen, Leeds, Oslo, Sorbonne, Edinburgh, Reading, Princeton, Glasgow, Johns Hopkins, Aberdeen, Athens, Cracow and Philadelphia. Joseph John Thomson died August 30, 1940

Work Cited A Look inside the Atom." American Institute If Physics. Mar Web. 7 Nov "J.J. Thomson - Biography." Nobelprize.org. Web. 07 Nov "Joseph John Thomson | Chemical Heritage Foundation." Chemical Heritage Foundation. The Berndt Group, Web. 07 Nov