MYSTERIES OF ELECTRICITY

Evening Star, Issue 14512, 2 November 1910, Page 9

MYSTERIES OF ELECTRICITY

Telegraphing from Sheffield on September 1, the correspondent of a London paper said:—“ The principal feature of the present meeting of the British Association is that it has no particular features. That is to say, there is nothing sensational about it. No discoveries are announced which foreshadow great changes to the ‘man in the street.’ ” It is true that Sir J. J, Thomson, of Cambridge, one of the greatest physicists of the ago and the authority on electricity, read a paper in which ho suggested that he was on the eve of a discovery. It was on positive and negative ions, the latter being unusually called electrons. We know much about electrons—even to their weight, which is only a thousandth part of a hydrogen atom, the lightest element known—and the electrical charge they carry has been accurately measured ; but, hitherto, practically nothing has been known of the positive ions. Sir J. J. Thomson said that he could scarcely announce that he had discovered the positive ions, but ho gavo the impression that he was within reach of the discovery. Until that discovery is completed, it is impossible that wo should have an adequate knowledge of the nature of electricity, however much we know already of its effects.