Talk:J. J. Thomson/Archive 1

Archive 1

Comment '05

If someone types in JJ Thomson or J.J. Thomson or J.J. ThomPson or other variations they're redirected here anyway....--Deglr6328 21:19, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• Yes, but they can't find this article through google or another search engine that way. Someone is far more likely to search for "J.J. Thomson" than "Joseph John Thomson".--Pharos 00:06, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• "J. J. Thompson" didn't work for me. Bubba73 (talk), 05:44, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Joseph John Thomson → J.J. Thomson

I think this article should be moved to J.J. Thomson per Wikipedia:Naming conventions, as this is by far how he is most commonly known. Is there any disagreement?--Pharos 19:08, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Google and every high school physics student in the world knows him better as J.J.--Pharos 19:59, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• Oppose...and the redirect as it stands works just fine for those who want to search for him as J.J. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. —ExplorerCDT 23:21, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  • Shouldn't the article be at the most common name, the one millions of students learn in school?--Pharos 01:36, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)
    • Does the redirect not work or something? Or are you the only one not satisfied that no matter what way you approach the subject you get your information? —ExplorerCDT 04:35, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  • What do you mean? I'm just saying that the policy of Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names) is useful because using the common name allows greater access to articles from search engines like google. BTW, the article has already been moved by an admin who saw the notice, but it might be moved back in the interim for fair discussion.--Pharos 07:33, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)
• Support. Makes sense - he is better known by his initials. john k 08:20, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)
• Support. We have other articles by initials - Historian A.J.P. Taylor for one. Timrollpickering 10:30, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose. Pointless move, leave him where he is now. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 15:12, 28 Jan 2005 (UTC)
• Support. Use the form more familiar to most who are looking for it. Jonathunder 20:20, 2005 Jan 28 (UTC)
• Support. I've lost the "popular usage" argument enough times that I may as well vote against common sense in this instance. Noisy | Talk 01:54, Jan 29, 2005 (UTC)
• Support. See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names) --Sketchee 23:59, Jan 29, 2005 (UTC)
• Support -- ALoan (Talk) 12:59, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC)
• Support. Neutrality^talk 06:39, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

Extra image

J.J. Thomson

This image used to be the main illustration for this page. If the aricle gets longer, it can be re-added. grendel|khan 07:42, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

Agreed. It is clearer and has a better quality, I guess... Djsonik 02:13, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm curious about the state of the technology at this age

Hello,

Don't you think the paragraph concerning the experiment could be extended with some description of what Thomson used ? How did he generated electron, etc. I think he didn't open a television to get its electron gun Cathode_ray_tubes#General_description.

And I would like some explanations about the mysterious letters A, B, C, D, E in this image :

2^sd experiment

. I thing E has a positive charge, D has negative one, A must be positive because of the + (and that's good to give Kinetic energy, especially when the electrons don't fall on the side of the cylinder) but what about B ? Is it there only to eliminate electron that doesn't go straight forward, or is it more positive than A to accelerate more ?

Thank you, forgive my english (I learn every day) and congratulations for what have already been done (more complete than the french one :)). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 85.10.70.218 (talk) 10:26, 8 April 2007 (UTC).

Signature

where's his signature? Nobel medal instead... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Horiavulpe (talk • contribs) 01:33, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Historical accuracy

"He found that the charge to mass ratio was over a thousand times higher than that of a proton, suggesting either that the particles were very light or very highly charged."

The proton was not known when Thomson made his measurements. Given that this was the first measurement on an elementary particle, what data was available to provide a basis for comparison? As I understand it, Thomson's discovery had nothing to do with the relative size of e or m, but rather that the ratio was constant regardless of the cathode material, implying that these corpuscles were a (previously unknown) fundamental constituent of matter. Does someone with more expertise want to replace the quoted statement with one that makes more sense?

Answer: Yes, the word "proton" is an anachronism in the context of an 1897 discovery. Thomson's 1897 paper on Cathode rays (see References) does say that e/m (actually m/e) is constant, and also compares its value with that of a "hydrogen ion from electolysis". This means that for H⁺, he estimated e as the value from electrolysis measurements (in solution) and m as the known atomic weight of H. In the article I have today replaced "proton" by "hydrogen ion" which is more historically accurate. Dirac66 (talk) 19:21, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Brief visits to USA

The infobox now includes Residence USA (the latest edit today) as well as Institutions Princeton and Yale. The article however mentions exclusively the UK and Cambridge. The bio at the Nobel prize site http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1906/thomson-bio.html does contain two sentences describing BRIEF visits to America: "In 1896, Thomson visited America to give a course of four lectures, which summarised his current researches, at Princeton." and "Thomson returned to America in 1904 to deliver six lectures on electricity and matter at Yale University."

I think that infoboxes should list only institutions and countries where the subject spent at least a year, which I believe is standard biographical practice at least for scientists. Series of four and six visiting lectures are so brief that it cannot really be said that Thomson "lived" in the USA and "worked" at Princeton or Yale. If not, to be consistent then for many scientists we would have to give long lists of universities where they gave visiting lectures. Therefore I suggest deleting USA, Princeton and Yale from Thomson's infobox. Comments? Dirac66 (talk) 02:27, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Vandalism

Some one should watch this page... Many attacks on this page by this one person.theOne 09:49, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

So it would seem if anybody would like to fix it. --Jessence14 (talk) 20:46, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Proof that H has only 1 electron

I am curious about the brief statement under "Other work" that in 1906 Thomson showed that the H atom has only one electron. It would be interesting to know how he did this. Could someone with access to the reference cited (Hellemans, The Timetables of Science) check out his method and his logic? Dirac66 (talk) 01:48, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

This has been answered by the addition on Oct.4, 2008 of a link to Thomson's 1906 paper "On the number of corpuscles [electrons] in an atom", which contains his reasoning in full. Dirac66 (talk) 14:17, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Great-Grandson source?

Where is there proof that his Great-Grandson is in the World Sumo-wrestling cup Finals? [User:Code_2008]

Id just like to note the vandilism... this page should be locked

i agree
Media:yepI♥kenzie —Preceding unsigned comment added by 114.73.13.89 (talk) 07:47, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Deleting Horvitz-Thomson estimator

I am deleting "Horvitz-Thomson estimator" from the infobox. A Google search for this statistical method found http://www.jbs.agrsci.dk/~jon/Publ/canada99.html which refers to the paper by Horvitz, D.G. and Thompson, D.J. (1952) A generalization of sampling without replacement from a finite universe. J. Amer. Stastist. Assoc., 47, 663-685. This is therefore the work of another Thompson (with a p), twelve years after J.J.Thomson's death. Dirac66 (talk) 20:05, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

JJ Thompson was a scientist —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.93.164.195 (talk) 23:51, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

to the people who keep vandalising this page.. please stop its just not kool... go vandalise the vandalism site...or if your bored go here (its an actual site) www.bored.com —Preceding unsigned comment added by 114.73.13.89 (talk) 07:49, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

The first experiment

I found this article reasearching for a course I'm going to teach next year. It looks good, but I'm finding the description of the first experiment a little unclear. Maybe it's just me, but I think that a diagram would improve things. Surely Thomson's original sketches are availible to use? Does anyone know if it would be ok to use this?

Anyway, does anyone agree that the description could be improved by mentioning that the cyliders that made up the electrometer cup were co-axial? I find it difficult to get the experimental set up in my head using just the description given in the article. Also, it's my understanding that the experiment worked the other way around as described in the article. It wasn't that the cathode ray was deflected away from the cylinders to show that charge was no longer deposited on the electrometer, but rather that Thomson showed that charge began to be detected when the cathode ray was deflected towards the electrometer (the electrometer being offset from the path of the undeflected electrons) It seems to me that the description in the article is more of a description of Perrin's earlier electrometer cup experiment. MalachiK (talk) 16:53, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Good points. A diagram would certainly help. The copyright rules on Wiki seem to be confused and not interpreted uniformly, perhaps because many countries are involved. I suggest that you first try to include the diagram you have found on the Stanford site, either with their permission or with a note similar to the one for the second experiment. If that turns out to be not acceptable, we can always draw another.

And you are correct that this Wikipedia article now describes Perrin's experiment and not Thomson's modification of same. This is made clear in Thomson's original article [Phil. Mag. 44, 293 (1897)] which is the second Reference in the article, but the point was lost in the Wikipedia description. Perhaps because most of us have forgotten the historical context of 1897 when it was necessary to argue against the "aetherial" theory. So I encourage you to correct the description of the first experiment, and to mention Perrin's role as well. Dirac66 (talk) 21:31, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I've added some background to the experiment, the picture and a quote from the 1897 paper which I thought made the point pretty well. I've not done this level of editing before so I suspect that this is far from perfect. I'm pretty sure that the formatting could be improved for a start! I'd really appreciate it if an editor with more experience than me could take a look at what I've done. Thanks. MalachiK (talk) 23:21, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

It looks good and I think the formatting is OK. Copyright is a problem though. I spoke to a Wikipedia administrator I know who says that one can invoke fair use provided that

1) a rationale is provided. He suggests stating that this is the historic diagram used in Thomson's paper; and

2) the image resolution is inferior to full resolution, which I suppose requires uploading it again a different way - I don't know how. Apparently this is necessary under copyright law until the author has been dead for 70 years = 30 August 2010 for Thomson; full resolution is allowed after that date.

I also have a problem with describing the opposing theory he disproved as "a wave-like electron", which would be rather ironic given the later developments of quantum mechanics and electron diffraction (by Thomson's son!). Actually J.J. Thomson's 1897 paper does not contain the word "wave", so I think it would be better to use Thomson's own phrase "some process in the aether". This of course sounds ridiculous in 2009 but it is historically correct. Dirac66 (talk) 02:02, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

1) Yes, I agree that a reference to the aether would be better. In fact, I had written it that way in an earlier draft but I had doubts about being understood. Anyway, I've changed it now. 2) I did think of selecting the 'Historical document' tag, and also I thought that the image had been published in the USA prior to 1920 (or some date like it) and this was also available as a tag. Anyway, I'll see if I can work out how to change the copyright status of the image later today. MalachiK (talk) 06:56, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

1) OK. I changed your sentence on aether a little, mostly to say that the "some scientists" used it to explain "cathode rays" (the observed phenomenon) rather than "electrons". And I added a link for aether to help anyone not familiar with the term. Dirac66 (talk) 13:57, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

J.J THOMPSON

he was born on the 18th of December but died at the age of 83 in august the 30th in 1940! he was very clever for he discovered something that changed our life! Thomson's early interest in atomic structure was reflected in his Treatise on the Motion of Vortex Rings which won him the Adams Prize in 1884. His Application of Dynamics to Physics and Chemistry appeared in 1886, and in 1892 he had his Notes on Recent Researches in Electricity. wow! now we have all this electronic stuff all because of him. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.17.56.23 (talk) 18:27, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

The Royal Institution Lecture of 30 April 1897

I have made a number of changes to the account of the discovery of the electron, to recognise that Thomson announced his idea of the corpuscle several months ahead of the main experiment by which he is generally held to have discovered it. The announcement was made at a lecture at the Royal Institution on 30 April 1897 and reported in The Electrician and the formal Proceedings of the Royal Institution The well known m/e experiment was not mentioned at this time. It was performed later and reported in the 'Philosophical Magazine' in October the same year. I've also added further details of the cathode rays experiments, and corrected the chronology of the magnetic deflection experiments. My account follows that in Davis and Falconer ijf3 (talk) 9 Jan 2011 —Preceding undated comment added 23:27, 9 January 2011 (UTC).

Looks like you have done some good research. My only suggestion would be added some references to your sources in this part of the article. Davis and Falconer is already cited in the bio and in the isotope section, but not yet in the electron section. Dirac66 (talk) 00:21, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Sources for new material

To Kurzon: I think you are generally doing a good job with all the new material. But could you include the sources - I have the impression you are working from a book about Thomson and would like to know which book plus the pages that various details come from. Some facts are in the sources given now but not all, and a few seem to be different.

For example, you changed his brother's age today from two years younger than JJT to four years younger - I checked the article references which seemed relevant and the only mention of his brother I found was in the External Link tagged "Essay on Thomson life and religious views", which says two years younger. If you have another source which says four years, it should be identified. Dirac66 (talk) 23:01, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

I don't know what source Kurzon used, but Thomson's biographer, the 4th Lord Rayleigh, says his brother Frederick was two years younger, and appears, from his biography to have done some genealogical research and talked to Thomson's relatives. Davis and Falconer have followed Rayleigh's account in their book (referenced in the article). However, David Thomson, JJ's grandson, in the preface to the same book, Davis and Falconer, says Frederick was four years younger. David Thomson was born after Frederick's death and was still a child when JJ died. You can draw your own conclusions, but I suspect that only getting hold of Frederick's birth certificate is going to resolve this one now. ijf3 (talk) 9 Jan 2011

Anyone know if he was related to his contemporary and sometime co-researcher, Lord Kelvin aka Wm. Thomson? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.99.22.25 (talk) 05:42, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

third experiment

couls some one make the maths behind this experiment clearer. first of all what has l (the length of the plates) got to do with the magnetic deflection. second of all, how does this simplify. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.148.88.196 (talk) 20:31, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

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