Radiant Matter

Two views of the Crookes tubes

Radiant Matter Crookes investigated the properties of cathode rays, showing that they travel in straight lines, cause fluorescence in objects upon which they impinge, and by their impact produce great heat. He believed that he had discovered a fourth state of matter, which he called "radiant matter", but his theoretical views on the nature of "radiant matter" proved to be mistaken. He believed the rays to consist of streams of particles of ordinary molecular magnitude. It remained for Sir J. J. Thomson to discover their subatomic nature, and to prove that cathode rays consist of streams of negative electrons, that is, of negatively electrified particles whose mass is only 1/1840 that of a hydrogen atom. Nevertheless, Crookes's experimental work in this field was the foundation of discoveries which eventually changed the whole of chemistry and physics. In 1903, Crookes turned his attention to the newly discovered phenomenon of radioactivity, achieving the separation from uranium of its active transformation product, uranium-X (later established to be protactinium). He observed the gradual decay of the separated transformation product, and the simultaneous reproduction of a fresh supply in the original uranium. At about the same time as this important discovery, he observed that when "p-particles", ejected from radio-active substances, impinge upon zinc sulfide, each impact is accompanied by a minute scintillation, an observation which forms the basis of one of the most useful methods in the technique of radioactivity.

Cathode rays (also called an electron beam or e-beam) are streams of electrons observed in vacuum tubes. By the 1870s, British physicist William Crookes and others were able to evacuate tubes to a lower pressure, below 10−6 atm. These were called Crookes tubes. Faraday had been the first to notice a dark space just in front of the cathode, where there was no luminescence. This came to be called the "cathode dark space", "Faraday dark space" or "Crookes dark space". Crookes found that as he pumped more air out of the tubes, the Faraday dark space spread down the tube from the cathode toward the anode, until the tube was totally dark. But at the anode (positive) end of the tube, the glass of the tube itself began to glow. What was happening was that as more air was pumped from the tubes, the electrons could travel farther, on average, before they struck a gas atom. By the time the tube was dark, most of the electrons could travel in straight lines from the cathode to the anode end of the tube without a collision. With no obstructions, these low mass particles were accelerated to high velocities by the voltage between the electrodes. These were the cathode rays. When they reached the anode end of the tube, they were travelling so fast that, although they were attracted to it, they often flew past the anode and struck the back wall of the tube. When they struck atoms in the glass wall, they excited their orbital electrons to higher energy levels, causing them to fluoresce. Later researchers painted the inside back wall with fluorescent chemicals such as zinc sulfide, to make the glow more visible. Cathode rays themselves are invisible, but this accidental fluorescence allowed researchers to notice that objects in the tube in front of the cathode, such as the anode, cast sharp-edged shadows on the glowing back wall. In 1869, German physicist Johann Hittorf was first to realize that something must be travelling in straight lines from the cathode to cast the shadows. Eugen Goldstein named them cathode rays. [edit]Discovery of the electron At this time, atoms were the smallest particles known, and were believed to be indivisible. What carried electric currents was a mystery. During the last quarter of the 19th century many experiments were done to determine what cathode rays were. There were two theories. Crookes and Artur Shuster believed they were particles of "radiant matter", that is, electrically charged atoms. German scientists Eilhard Wiedemann, Heinrich Hertz and Goldstein believed they were "aether waves", some new form of electromagnetic radiation, and were separate from what carried the electric current through the tube. The debate was resolved in 1897 when J. J. Thomson measured the mass of cathode rays, showing they were made of particles, but were around 1800 times lighter than the lightest atom, hydrogen. Therefore they were not atoms, but a new particle, the first subatomic particle to be discovered, which he originally called "corpuscle" but was later named electron, after particles postulated by George Johnstone Stoney in 1874. He also showed they were identical with particles given off by photoelectric and radioactive materials.[2] It was quickly recognised that they are the particles that carry electric currents in metal wires, and carry the negative electric charge of the atom. Thomson was given the 1906 Nobel prize for physics for this work. Philipp Lenard also contributed a great deal to cathode ray theory, winning the Nobel prize for physics in 1905 for his research on cathode rays and their properties. [edit]Vacuum tubes The gas ionization (or cold cathode) method of producing cathode rays used in Crookes tubes was unreliable, because it depended on the pressure of the residual air in the tube. Over time, the air was absorbed by the walls of the tube, and it stopped working. A more reliable and controllable method of producing cathode rays was investigated by Hittorf and Goldstein,[citation needed] and rediscovered by Thomas Edison in 1880. A cathode made of a wire filament heated red hot by a separate current passing through it would release electrons into the tube by a process called thermionic emission. The first true electronic vacuum tubes, invented around 1906, used this hot cathode technique, and they superseded Crookes tubes. These tubes didn't need gas in them to work, so they were evacuated to a lower pressure, around 10−9 atm (10−4 P). The ionization method of creating cathode rays used in Crookes tubes is today only used in a few specialized gas discharge tubes such as krytrons.

Further reading

• On Radiant Matter by W. Crookes at Wikisource