Electrons in the Thomson family: from waves to particles, and back again.
DIPC Seminars
- Speaker
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Dr. Jaume Navarro, Ikerbasque Research Professor UPV/EHU
- When
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2013/02/15
13:00 - Place
- Donostia International Physics Center (DIPC).Paseo Manuel de Lardizabal, 4 (nearby the Facultad de Quimica), Donostia
- Add to calendar
-
iCal
**
Electrons in the Thomson family: from waves to particles, and back again. **
Jaume Navarro, Ikerbasque Research Professor
In 1897, Joseph John Thomson, Professor of Experimental Physics and director
of the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, ascribed corpuscular nature to the
carriers of electricity in cathode rays. This event constitutes what is
traditionally known as the _discovery_ of the electron. Exactly thirty years
later, his son, George Paget Thomson, obtained the first pictures of electron
diffraction, by which he showed the undulatory behaviour of his father’s
electrons. Ironically, while the father had proved that a wave phenomenon (the
cathode rays) could be explained in terms of corpuscular entities (the
electron), the son was claiming back some of the wave aspects of the
corpuscle.
This is the core story line of this seminar: a biography of the electron in
the Thomson family, and, by extension, in the university of Cambridge.