Free College Admissions Essays: The Discovery Of The Electron

The discovery of the electron in 1897 not only changed the course of physics research continuum, it paved the way for a wave of new revolutionary discoveries and implications about the universe, ultimately opening the doors to Quantum Mechanics. As for the man attributed to this discovery, he went on to win a Nobel Prize in physics in 1906 and many other honors. Selected for Professorship, head of the physics department, at twenty-eight years old following Lord Rayleigh as his successor, he transformed his university's laboratory, the Cavendish Laboratory, into an established destination for subatomic physics research, setting layers upon layers of significant physics history upon its walls. Seven of his students went on to win Nobel Prizes for themselves and many others became successful professors. “It was a mere accident that I became a physicist; it was intended that I should be an engineer,” he said. Two years into his engineering apprenticeship, his father died, only thirty-nine, and his mom could not afford the amount of money required for him to pursue engineering. However, with advising from his mathematics

On his first attempt, he failed to create a deflection by sending the rays through two metal plates, but he later realized it was because the pressure inside the tube was too high and the gas was neutralizing the electric forces. He managed to create a higher vacuum and then was able to see a significant deflection. Since the rays leaned towards to positive plate, this showed him that they were negatively charged. This gave him a method of finding the ratio between mass and charge and the velocity of the “particles.” He announced the existence of corpuscles later called electrons at the Royal Institution in 1897 and many were skeptical at first. He went on to win the Nobel Prize in