The Locomotive - Lighthouse Survival Blog

120 THE LOCOMOTIVE. [August,
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HARTFORD. AUGUST 15, 1901.
M. Allen, A.M., M.E., Editor. A. D. Risteen, Associate Editor.
The Locomotive can J«s obtained free by calling at any of the company's agencies.
Subscription price 50 cents per year when mailed from this office.
Bound volumes one dollar each. (Any volume can be supplied.)
On Bodies Smaller than the Atoms.
For many years past we have been taught that all matter consists of molecules,
which are exceedingly small, and yet not too small for us to be able to get some ideas
about their actual diameters. We cannot pin a molecule down, and measure it with a
micrometer caliper, it is true, but, nevertheless, we can get some general idea of its
magnitude by methods that are known to those who have followed the development of
modern physics.
AVe have also been taught that the molecules of substances are made up of still
smaller particles called atoms; and, while the number of atoms in some of the more
complicated organic substances may be large, we have been led to believe that the ele-
mentary bodies, such as copper, iron, lead, sulphur, iodine, and the like, are very simply
constituted, their molecules each consisting of from two to six or eight or perhaps a
dozen atoms. Some substances, such as mercury vapor, have even been thought (for
good reasons) to be so simple in constitution that their molecules each contain but one
atom — the words "atom" and "molecule" being synonymous in these cases. We
have also been taught that the constituent atoms of the various elementary substances
are essentially different from one another, so that there is no possibility of transmuting
silver into platinum, nor quartz into diamonds; and we have furthermore been told that
the "atoms" that have figured so prominently in the chemical and physical philosophies
of the last century are the smallest bodies that exist in nature.
The atomic theory of Dalton, to which we have been referring, was promulgated
and placed on what appeared to be a sure foundation, very early in the nineteenth century;
and yet the twentieth century has hardly begun when Professor James J. Thom-
son, a man of undoubted learning and ability, announces that the molecules of all bodies
consist, wholly or in part, of particles which he calls "corpuscles," which are so ex-
ceedingly small that no less than a thousand of them would be required to make a single
atom of hydrogen. And the atom of hydrogen was previously supposed to be the
smallest mass of matter in existence! More than this, he announces that the constituent
"corpuscles" of all the elementary bodies are exactly alike, so far as he lias been able
to test the matter of their similarity.
This scientific bombshell was thrown in among us so recently that it »s not yet pos-
sible to decide whether it is time to throw our previous notions overboard, or whether
there may not be some other possible, but as yet unthought-of, explanation of the pro-
fessor's experiments. The " corpuscular " theory is the outcome of the experiments that
have been made on the "cathode rays." that are seen in X-ray vacuum tubes, such as
were described in The Locomotive when the X-rays were first discovered. Physicists
sought to discover the nature of the cathode rays, and after many experiments had been