NEW CONCEPTIONS IN SCIENCE 



of a chemical atom introduces the notion of an 

 electrical atom. The word atom, however, is so 

 definitely associated with particles of matter that 

 another name has been found for this electric unit 

 of nature. It is called an electron. 



Even before anything smaller than the chemic 

 atom was known, this idea of electrons was thought 

 to be full of large possibilities. It acquired a vital 

 significance when Professor Thomson showed that 

 the cathode particles are a thousand times smaller 

 than the smallest known atom that of hydrogen 

 and yet that they carry the same charge. They 

 carry the same charge as an atom of silver which 

 has more than one hundred thousand times their 

 mass. To our vague conceptions of what is electric- 

 ity we must add the idea that it is a finite quantity, 

 countable in units, like, let us say, grains of sand. 



Perhaps this new notion is hardly so foreign to 

 our habits of thinking as it seems at first blush. 

 We know absolutely nothing of electricity save as 

 it is associated with ponderable matter. The con- 

 verse of this idea seems now taking possession of 

 the field no matter without electricity . Electricity 

 seems everywhere. It seems an invariable prop- 

 erty of matter. 



Supposing, then, that the cathode particles are, 

 in truth, the stuff of which the atoms are made, we 

 might consider these particles in a state of intense 



