BOLLU SRINIVAS
Last Activity: 9 Years ago
cathode rays are processes in the ether or are moving, electrically-charged, inert masses". Like his English colleagues, Wien favored the latter option, although there were a number of phenomena which did not quite fit the charged particle model. Cathode rays seemed to make their way independent of the path of the current and even passed through thin metal plates without any noticeable drop in velocity. Wien thus had cathode rays pass through an aluminum foil in a tube with an "extreme vacuum", where he monitored the charge by means of an electrometer. He could thus rule out that the charge transfer occurred through the fill gas which had become conductive along the path of the ray. He then determined the velocity of the cathode ray particles and their mass-to-charge ratio with the help of crossed, electric and magnetic fields (Wien filter). In the article he published in Annalen der Physik in 1898 [6] he writes of an m/e value of 5x10
