Electron Quotes

“Atomic theory”

“Electron shell”

“The electron: may it never be of any use to anybody!”

“Wikipedia: Electron”

“The Discovery of the Electron, American Institute of Physics, Center for History of Physics”

“The rigid electron is in my view a monster in relation to Maxwell's equations, whose innermost harmony is the principle of relativity.”

“And, just like it should in all stories about philosophers, it ended up in complete chaos. In all their previous discussions they hadn't even asked themselves whether such a simple object as a brick, much less an electron, is an "essential object."”

“Several of Thomson’s colleagues thought he was joking when he argued that the electron was smaller than the atom and was a constituent of every atom; to many scientists, the idea that there could exist matter smaller than the atom was inconceivable. Yet he was proved right.”

“What quantum mechanics tells us, I believe, is surprising to say the least. It tells us that the basic components of objects – the particles, electrons, quarks etc. – cannot be thought of as "self-existent". The reality that they, and hence all objects, are components of is merely "empirical reality".”

“It is clear... that the electrons—those minute particles whose size is to that of a bacillus as the size of a bacillus is to, say, the whole earth, and whose properties we may yet measure with the greatest precision— that these electrons are one of the most important foundations of our whole world structure.”

“If quantum mechanics is right, there is no way to get around the uncertainty principle. The reason that the electron’s probability wave spread so much after we confined it, Heisenberg would argue, is that its momentum became almost completely indeterminate. In a manner of speaking, it headed off in all directions.”

“It is not an unusual phenomenon in the history of science that views which were once considered antiquated and out of date suddenly come into favor again, though in a more or less modified form. An extremely interesting case of this kind is presented by the revolution in our ideas of electric phenomena which has taken place within the last 10 years...”

“Since it appears that all negative electricity is made up of equal particles and since it is very probable that any atom can be exactly neutral it follows that the amount of positive electricity in any atom must be an exact multiple of the charge of one negative electron. This makes it probable that positive electricity is also made up of equal parts, but so far they have not been obtained free.”

“... so long as we confine ourselves to the classical electrodynamic theory we cannot even understand why we obtain spectra consisting of sharp lines at all. This theory can even be said to be incompatible with the assumption of the existence of atoms possessing the structure we have described, in that the motions of the electrons would claim a continuous energy from the atom, which would cease only when the electrons had fallen into the nucleus.”

“If we ask, for instance, whether the position of the electron remains the same, we must say 'no'; if we ask whether the electron's position changes with time, we must say 'no'; if we ask whether the electron is at rest, we must say 'no'; if we ask whether it is in motion, we must say 'no'. The Buddha has given such answers when interrogated as to the conditions of a man's self after his death; but they are not familiar answers for the tradition of seventeenth and eighteenth century science.”

“The power of the new quantum mechanics in giving us a better understanding of events on an atomic scale is becoming increasingly evident. The structure of the helium atom, the existence of half-quantum numbers in band spectra, the continuous spatial distribution of photo-electrons, and the phenomenon of radioactive disintegration, to mention only a few examples, are achievements of the new theory which had baffled the old.”

“H. A. Lorentz has found out the Relativity theorem and has created the Relativity postulate as a hypothesis that electrons and matter suffer contractions in consequence of their motion according to a certain law. A. Einstein has brought out the point very clearly, that this postulate is not an artificial hypothesis but is rather a new way of comprehending the time-concept, which is forced upon us by observation of natural phenomena.”

“Thomson's lecture drew from Fitz Gerald the suggestion that "we are dealing with free electrons in these cathode rays"—a remark the point of which will become more evident when we come to consider the direction in which the Maxwellian theory was being developed at this time.”

“In physics we have outgrown archer and apple-pie definitions of the fundamental symbols. To a request to explain what an electron really is supposed to be we can only answer, "It is part of the ABC of physics".
The external world of physics has thus become a world of shadows. In removing our illusions we have removed the substance, for indeed we have seen that substance is one of the greatest of our illusions. ...that physical science is concerned with a world of shadows is one of the most significant of recent advances.”

“Electrons and suchlike entities simply are, indeed they have always (or at least for eons) been, and they eventually made themselves known in the laboratory. It is nowadays fashionable to talk of non-human beings as though they act rather like people. The contemporary realist... might... find poetically congenial the evocative image of an electron as a tangible presence in the late nineteenth century laboratory, where, it might be said, they first learned to speak—or where, perhaps, they were no longer silenced.”