BELIEVE   ME   NOT!    - -     A   SKEPTIC's   GUIDE  

. . . Gay-Lussac^23.1

As you might guess, the details of the history of these discoveries also tend to vary with the nationality of the Historian!

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. . . Alchemists^23.2

The Alchemists were already pretty certain of many of these, of course; but they were accustomed to keeping their mouths shut.

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. . . rays.^23.3

Such a device (for measuring the charge-to-mass ratio of electrically charged particles) is known as a MAGNETIC SPECTROMETER. Thomson's version was pretty crude by today's standards, but this is still the most accurate method for measuring the   ${q \over m}$  ratio of particles (and hence, if we know their charge by some other means, their mass).

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. . . come.^23.4

This is really the original prototype example of a QUANTIZED property. Many others were to follow, as we shall see.

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. . . charge.^23.5

Naturally, sometimes he got two or three electrons on a drop; but this was simple enough to take into account: sometimes he got a result of  e,  sometimes he got a result of  2e,  sometimes he got a result of  3e, but he never got a result of   $\onehalf e$,  for instance, so it was clear which result was the true charge quantum.

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. . . charge.^23.6

This is truly an unavoidable conclusion if we accept the theory of classical electrodynamics at face value; it was not just a misinterpretation. You may be sure that hordes of Physicists looked high and low for a way out of this and found none.

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. . . nucleus.^23.7

This humourous name for the size of a target may have marked the start of a trend toward "cute" nomenclature in Particle Physics, which manifested itself later in strangeness, quarks and (most recently) truth and beauty as particle properties - the latter pair now being retracted in favour of top and bottom, which I regard as a failure of nerve and will on the part of Particle Physicists. But that is yet another story . . . .

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