Landmark Experiments in Twentieth-Century Physics

Experiments.

Chapter 1

The Wave Nature of X Rays

Scarcely any other invention in history was exploited as promptly as were x rays. Within a few months of their discovery by Wilhelm Röntgen in 1895, they were being used for medical diagnostic purposes and for the examination of metal castings. Yet it was not until nearly twenty years later that their true nature was established.

The question of the nature of x rays had been widely argued almost from the start. Many scientific observers, as well as a large part of the general public, appeared to regard them as identical to cathode rays, the beams of electrons emitted from the cathode of an electrical discharge in a low-pressure gas, despite the fact that they were unaffected by magnetic fields. Other scientists thought that they were longitudinal vibrations in the aether; still others suspected that they were transverse waves of a character similar to light. The difficulty lay in the fact that the known properties and producible effects did not seem to fit any of these hypotheses. When the rays struck matter, they were scattered, much as light is scattered from a cloudy liquid. But they could not be refracted or reflected.¹ Efforts to produce polarization by selective absorption, in the manner used for visible light in tourmaline, were also unsuccessful. Charles Barkla, in 1906, demonstrated polarization by double scattering,² but many people were not convinced, since such experiments could also be explained in terms of spinning particles. The real touchstone of the wave nature, as Thomas Young had recognized in regard to visible light a century earlier, was the production of interference effects. Attempts in this direction were hampered by a lack of knowledge of the wavelength range. The decisive work was done in 1912 by Max von Laue, Walter Friedrich, and Paul Knipping, and earned a Nobel prize in physics for Laue in 1914. This chapter describes their work, as originally presented to the Royal Bavarian Academy of Sciences and published in its Meeting Reports, and subsequently republished in Annalen der Physih.

Actually, previous efforts to detect interference had been made. As early as 1899, Hermann Haga and Cornelis Wind had passed a beam of x rays through a triangular aperture. If the x rays were waves, they should have been diffracted by the edges of the slit, and the image on a photographic plate some distance behind the slit should have been broader than the slit itself³; the amount of broadening, together with the dimensions of the apparatus, would then give an estimate of the wavelength. Haga and Wind concluded that if there were interference effects, the wavelengths involved must be less than about 10-9 cm. This work was repeated by Bernhard Walter and Robert Pohl in 1908, with even more discouraging results—they put limits of the order of 10-10 cm on the wavelength. Their work, however, was reanalyzed in 1912 by Arnold Sommerfeld, with the help of photometric measurements on the original photoplates by Peter Koch, and the conclusion of Haga and Wind was supported: No assurance could be found that waves were actually involved, but if they were, they must have wavelengths of the order of 10-9 cm.

What Laue did was to fit this piece of data with others from the theory of solids and atomic theory. He knew, first, that already in 1850 there was introduced into crystallography by Bravais the theory that the atoms in crystals are arranged in a spatial lattice. If the Röntgen rays truly consist of electromagnetic waves, then it is to be expected that on excitation of the atoms to vibrations, free or forced, the space-lattice structure will give rise to interference phenomena. Moreover, the constants of this lattice can be easily calculated from the molecular weight of the crystallized compound, its density, and the number of molecules per gram molecule, in addition to the crystallographic data. One finds for them just the order of magnitude 10-8 cm.... This was just what was needed to produce significant interference phenomena with x rays, if indeed the rays were wavelike in character.

The known results of optical interference theory could not be taken over directly, because of the considerable complication ... that for the space lattice a threefold periodicity is present, whereas for optical gratings one has a periodic repetition only in one direction, or ... at most two directions. Laue, therefore, worked out the theory on the basis that each atom was excited an equal amount by the influence of an incident plane wave traveling at the speed of light. The details of this derivation are of no concern here; the crucial result was a set of three equations for the direction in which the scattered intensity would have a maximum. Each of these equations represents a set of circular cones whose axes coincide with one of the edges of the elementary unit of the space lattice. Now, obviously, only in exceptional cases will it happen that one direction satisfies all three conditions at the same time.... Nevertheless, a visible maximum of intensity is to be expected when the line of intersection of two cones of the first two sets lies close to a cone of the third set. If the scattered rays strike plane photographic plates, these maxima will produce isolated spots, which, however, should be grouped along families of conic sections⁴—more particularly, at points where three curves, one from each of three families, intersect or nearly intersect.

It must be observed that for a given space lattice the division into elementary parallelepipeds is not unique, but can be carried out in innumerable ways.... According to the foregoing, the intensity maxima must be able to be grouped along interrupted conic sections around ... axes [arising from such alternative divisions], as in general, to each such kind of division belongs a way of grouping the maxima.

At Laue’s suggestion, Friedrich and Knipping carried out the experimental test. After some preliminary studies with a provisional apparatus, the apparatus shown in Fig. 1-1 was built. "From the Röntgen rays proceeding from the anticathode A of a Röntgen tube, a small pencil of about 1 mm diameter was cut off by the stops B1 to B4. This pencil penetrates the crystal Kr, which is set up on a goniometer G. Around the crystal, in various directions and at different distances, were fixed photographic plates P, on which was recorded the intensity distribution of the secondary radiation emanating from the crystal. The setup was guarded against unwanted radiation in a satisfactory way by a large lead shield S as well as by the lead case K.

"The arrangement of the entire experimental setup was effected by optical means. We had a cathetometer, whose telescope was fitted with a crosshair, set up immovably. The ‘hot spot’ of the anticathode, the stops, and the goniometer axis were brought in turn into the optical axis of the telescope.... The stops B1 to B3 mainly blocked off the secondary radiation from the tube walls, while stop B4 formed the limits for the pencil of Röntgen rays incident on the crystal. This ordinarily had a diameter 0.75 mm, was drilled in a lead disk 10 mm thick, and could be adjusted by means of three positioning screws (not shown) in such a way that the axis of the hole coincided exactly with the axis of the telescope or the axis of the pencil of rays. In this way it was arranged that a ray pencil of circular cross section fell on the crystal.... The tube R served ... to avoid as much as possible the secondary rays that were produced by the primary radiation striking the rear wall of the case.

Fig. 1-1. Friedrich and Knipping’s apparatus for studying the scattering of x rays penetrating a crystal. [Ann. Physik 41 (1912), p. 979, Fig. 1.]

After this adjustment, ... the axis of the goniometer was set perpendicular to the path of the rays in the usual way. In the same way the different plate holders were ... adjusted.... When the apparatus was oriented to that extent, the crystal to be irradiated, which was fastened to the goniometer table by a trace of sticky wax, was put in place, this again with the help of the telescope already mentioned.... This ... very essential adjustment we could make to within a precision of a minute [of arc].

The first exposure with the final apparatus used a middling crystal of copper sulfate that had been used in the preliminary studies. The figures obtained on plates P4 and P5 in this exposure are shown in Fig. 1-2. "It is noteworthy that the distances (crystal—P4) and (crystal—P5) are in proportion to the sizes of the figures on P4 and P5, respectively, from which it is established that the rays travel out from the crystal in straight lines. It is further to be observed that the sizes of the individual secondary spots, despite the greater distance of plate P5 from the crystal, remain the same. This is taken as a sure indication that the secondary rays producing each individual spot leave the crystal as a parallel beam.

Fig. 1-2. Two figures obtained in the first exposure: (a) from plate P4 of Fig. 1-1, (b) from plate P5. [Ann. Physik 41 (1912), Plate I, Figs. 2 and 1, respectively.]

"It is to be expected that the phenomenon will be more transparent and easy to understand with a crystal of the regular [i.e., cubic] system than with the triclinic copper sulfate, since it can be assumed⁵ with certainty that the pertinent space lattice is of the greatest possible simplicity. Regular zinc blende seemed suitable to us.... We had a plane parallel plate of 10 X 10 mm dimensions and 0.5 mm thick cut ... parallel to a cube face (perpendicular to a crystallographic principal axis) from a good crystal. This plate was oriented ... so that the primary rays penetrated the crystal perpendicular to the cube face. Figure [1-3] shows the result of one such trial. The pattern of the secondary spots is completely symmetric around the position of the unscattered beam.... [The fourfold nature of the symmetry] is certainly one of the most beautiful pieces of evidence for the space lattice of the crystal, and that no property other than the space lattice alone comes into play here."

A slightly later paper by Laue contained a more detailed analysis. Laue had, as noted earlier, already derived the equations for the directions of the maxima. For the case of a cubic crystal with the incident beam directed along one of the principal axes, they take the simple form

(1-1)

where λ is the wavelength; α is the length of one edge of the elementary cubic unit of the crystal lattice; α, β, and γ are the cosines of the angles between the direction of the maximum and the x, y, and z axes, respectively (the z axis being the direction of the incident beam); and h1, h2, and h3 are integers (positive, negative, or zero). He was able to account for all the points in Fig. 1-3 by suitable choices of the three h’s and the assumption that the radiation consisted of five discrete wavelengths.

Fig. 1-3. The pattern of spots produced by x rays after passing through a crystal of zinc sulfide. [Ann. Physik 41 (1912), Plate II, Fig. 5.]

Laue’s analysis was soon subjected to criticism by W. L. Bragg, who noted that there were several sets of h’s which would satisfy the three components in Eq. (1-1) for one or another of the five wavelengths, and yet for which there was no spot. Bragg proposed an alternative explanation: that the incident radiation contained a continuous distribution of wavelengths, and that the maxima were produced by interference, not of beams from individual atoms, but of beams reflected from families of parallel planes. This mechanism will produce maxima whenever the wavelength λ, the angle θ between the incident beam and the normal to the planes, and the spacing d between planes in a family are related by

where n is a positive integer. Bragg took n = 1 throughout. The discreteness of the spots results from the fact that in a crystal lattice, only discrete families of planes of atoms can be formed. Bragg’s analysis proved much more satisfactory than Laue’s, in that it accounted not only for the positions of the spots but also qualitatively for their intensities; and Bragg and his father, Sir W. H. Bragg, soon applied it to further studies of x rays and of crystals.

Indeed, Laue had said in the first paper that agreement of his computation with experiment did not hide the fact that our theory can be improved in every respect. The essential conclusions, however, were qualitative ones that were not altered by details of the analysis. That the radiation leaving the crystal has a wave character is clearly shown by the sharpness of the intensity maxima, which is easily understandable as an interference phenomenon, but scarcely so on the basis of corpuscular concepts.... Nevertheless one could perhaps doubt the wave nature of the primary rays. Let us suppose that the atoms of the crystal were ... excited by a corpuscular radiation.... In that case there could be set into coherent oscillations only those rows of atoms that were struck by the same particle.... Consequently ... we would obtain only one condition for an intensity maximum and this, as already evident on grounds of symmetry, would be fulfilled on a circle around the point of impact of the primary rays. The interruption of this circle, which indeed actually appeared, would then not be understandable. But besides, the primary rays and those emanating from the crystal are to all appearances so similar that one can with passable certainty deduce the wave nature of the latter from that of the former.

Notes

1

Reflection was achieved in 1923. Even then it was not the kind of reflection ordinarily thought of for visible light, but the special type usually referred to as total internal reflection; and it took place only at near-grazing incidence.

2

An interpretative description of such an experiment in terms of transverse electromagnetic waves is as follows: Consider an unpolarized beam incident at 45° on a scattering surface. The beam leaving also at 45°, and thus at right angles to the incident, will be at least partially polarized (the degree depending on the optical properties of the scatterer), with the electric vector preferentially parallel to the scattering surface. Consequently, a second scattering through 90° will give a final scattered intensity that will depend strongly on the azimuth of the final beam around the intermediate. In particular, the scattering will be minimum when the final beam is perpendicular to the original beam as well as to the intermediate, and maximum when the final beam is parallel or antiparallel to the original.

3

The reason for use of a triangular slit is twofold: first, the aforementioned lack of knowledge of the wavelength and thus of a satisfactory width for a straight slit; second, the fact that the broadening would in any case be greater, as well as easier to establish, near the apex end than near the base end.

4

A conic section is a curve formed by the intersection of a plane and a circular cone. Conic sections include circles, parabolas, ellipses, and hyperbolas.

5

The certain deciphering of crystalline structure became possible only as a consequence of the work being described here.

Bibliography

The original papers are in German: W. Friedrich, P. Knipping, and M. v. Laue, Sitzungsberichte der königliche Bayerische Ahademie der Wissenschaften, Mathematische-Physikalische Abteilung 1912, 303; M. v. Laue, ibid., 363. A translated abridgement of the first paper appears in World of the Atom, vol. I, p. 832. These are reproduced slightly altered in W. Friedrich, P. Knipping, and M. v. Laue, Annalen der Physik 41, 971 (1913); M. v. Laue, ibid., 989. In the reprinting, however, the numbering of the figures in Plate I was reversed from that in the original and in the texts: See W. Friedrich, P. Knipping, and M. v. Laue, Annalen der Physik 42, 1064 (1913).

Laue describes the developments in his Nobel prize lecture, in Nobel Lectures, vol. I, p. 347.

Bragg’s analysis is presented in W. L. Bragg, Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society 17, 43 (1912). His work and that of his father won them a joint Nobel prize; see his lecture in Nobel Lectures, vol. I, p. 370.

An annotated bibliography of further readings pertaining to x rays is given by L. Muldawer, American Journal of Physics 37, 123 (1969).

Chapter 2

Isotopes

Electrical discharges in gases have been a subject of considerable attention ever since the middle of the nineteenth century, when the invention of the mercury-displacement pump by Geissler and of the induction coil by Faraday combined to allow production of the discharges under controlled conditions, thereby making such attention meaningful. Evidence of their significance in illumination is all around us; and since about 1950, their importance to the potentiality of power from nuclear fusion has made them the subject of special interest. What may not be so widely recognized, however, is the extent to which they have served as a means through which much of our knowledge of the atom has been obtained. They were used as sources for spectroscopic studies; they provided, through the discovery of the electron, the first unmistakable evidence that the atom is not indivisible; they were the actual object of study when Röntgen discovered x rays; and it was in a study of one of their aspects, the positive rays, that Sir J. J. Thomson found the first clear indication that not all the atoms of a given chemical element are truly identical. This chapter presents the story of that discovery.

In 1886, Eugen Goldstein discovered that if the cathode (negative electrode) in a discharge tube was perforated, streams of luminosity appeared behind it, i.e., on the side away from the discharge. He gave these luminous streams the name Kanalstrahlen or channel rays, because the perforations were small holes through a comparatively thick plate. However, he was not able to deflect them by means of the magnetic fields available to him. In 1898, Willy Wien succeeded in causing magnetic deflection of the rays. Not only did this establish that they were (positively) charged; it also enabled him to estimate the ratio of their charge to their mass.¹ The value he obtained was of the same order of magnitude as those obtained for the charge carriers in electrolysis.

Thomson regarded the rays as the most promising subjects for investigating the nature of positive electricity, and therefore undertook a more careful "series of determinations of the values of e/m for positive rays under different conditions." Most of his results were published in a series of eight papers in the Philosophical Magazine, extending from 1907 to 1912; they were also presented in part at a meeting of the Cambridge Philosophical Society and three of the weekly meetings of the Royal Institution; and they were summarized in a lecture before the Royal Society and in a book. Despite this seemingly extensive record, the story is not an easy one to unravel. There were, not surprisingly, several stages of development of the research; there were topics that were of considerable interest to Thomson that now appear relatively insignificant; and Thomson’s writings are not always completely clear, even when complemented by drawings. The end result, however, is unmistakable.

Although the basic features of the method remained unchanged, the details developed as the work went forward. In all cases, "the object of the experiments was to determine the value of e/m by observing the deflexion produced by magnetic and electric fields. At first, the rays were detected and their position determined by the phosphorescence they produced on a screen at the end of the discharge-tube. A considerable number of substances were examined to select the most satisfactory phosphor; likewise, considerable trouble was found in obtaining a suitable substance to make the powder adhere to the glass....

"The form of the tube adopted is shown in fig. [2-1]. A hole is bored through the cathode, and this hole leads to a very fine tube F. The bore of this tube is made as fine as possible so as to get a small well-defined fluorescent patch on the screen. These tubes were either carefully made glass tubes, or else the hollow thin needles used for hypodermic injections, which I find answer excellently for this purpose. After getting through the needle, the positive rays on their way down the tube pass between two parallel aluminum plates A, A. These plates are vertical, so that when they are maintained at different potentials the rays are subject to a horizontal electric force, which produces a horizontal deflexion of the patch of light on the screen. The part of the tube containing the parallel aluminum plates is narrowed as much as possible, and passes between the poles P, P of a powerful electromagnetic.... The poles of this magnet are as close together as the glass tube will permit, and are arranged so that the lines of magnetic force are horizontal and at right angles to the path of the rays. The magnetic force produces a vertical deflexion of the patch of phosphorescence on the screen. To bend the positive rays it is necessary to use strong magnetic fields, and if any of the lines of force were to stray into the discharge-tube in front of the cathode, they would distort the discharge in that part of the tube. This distortion might affect the position of the phosphorescent patch on the screen, so that unless we shield the discharge tube we cannot be sure that the displacement of the phosphorescence is entirely due to the electric and magnetic fields acting on the positive rays after they have emerged from behind the cathode.²

Fig. 2-1. Early version of Thomson’s apparatus for measuring elm for positive rays. [Phil. Mag, 13 (1907), p. 563, Fig. 2.]

"To screen off the magnetic field, the tube was placed in a soft iron vessel W with a hole knocked in the bottom, through which the part of the tube behind the cathode was pushed. Behind the vessel a thick plate of soft iron with a hole bored through it was placed [presumably I in Fig. 2-1], and behind this again as many thin plates of soft iron, such as are used for transformers, as there was room for were packed. When this was done it was found that the magnet produced no perceptible effect on the discharge in front of the cathode.

"... When the rays were undeflected they produced a bright spot on the screen; when the rays passed through electric and magnetic fields the spot was not simply deflected to another place, but was drawn out into bands or patches, sometimes covering a considerable area. To determine the velocity of the rays and the value of e/m, it was necessary to have a record of the shape of these patches.... The method actually adopted was as follows:—The tube was placed in a dark room from which all light was carefully excluded, the tube itself being painted over so that no light escaped from it. Under these circumstances the phosphorescence on the screen appeared bright and its boundaries well defined. The observer traced in Indian ink on the outside of the thin flat screen the outline of the phosphorescence. When this had been satisfactorily accomplished the discharge was stopped, the light admitted to the room, and the pattern on the screen transferred to tracing-paper; the deviations were then measured on these tracings."

In order to interpret the patterns, it is necessary to calculate the effects of the fields. This can be done rather simply for the electric deflection, and approximately for the magnetic. The necessary geometry is shown in Fig. 2-2. Consider first the case of the electric field, as shown in part (a). It will be assumed that the field is uniform between the plates and zero elsewhere (Thomson in the sixth paper of the series carried through the analysis including edge effects, and got results not significantly different). If the separation of the plates is s and the potential difference between them is V, the value of the field strength is V/s, and a particle of charge e and mass m will experience a constant acceleration of (e/m) V/s in the x direction. If its initial velocity is v, it will spend a time l/v in the field during which it will acquire a transverse velocity

and it will have undergone a deflection

It will take a time d/v to travel the remaining distance d to the screen, so that its additional displacement in the x direction will be ux (d/u) = eVld/msv². The total deflection at the screen is this plus x", or

(2-1)

The magnetic deflection is also reasonably simple for an idealized situation in which there is a uniform field extending all the way to the screen. In this case, the path is a circular arc; the magnetic force Bev, which always acts at right angles to the direction of motion, provides the centripetal force mv²/r:

from which the reciprocal of the radius is given as

(2-2)

Now by application of Pythagoras’s theorem to the triangle ABC in part (b) of Fig. 2-2, there is obtained

expansion of the square and transposition gives

For the usual situation, the deflection y is much smaller than the radius of curvature r, so that the y² can be neglected; then the solution for y is

(2-3)

Substitution of the above value for 1/r gives

(2-4)

This holds for the value of y at any corresponding value of z; in particular, the magnetic deflection at the screen in this ideal case would be

(2-5)

In actuality, however, the field is not uniform; Eq. (2-4) is replaced by

(2-4a)

and Eq. (2-5) by

(2-5a)

where B0 is the value of the field at some arbitrary reference point and f(z) is a function that depends on how the field varies from point to point.³ This function f(z) cannot be computed and must therefore be determined empirically; fortunately, only its value for z = l + d is needed. The method of determining it depends on the fact that a flexible wire carrying a current in a magnetic field will tend to form itself into a curve whose radius of curvature at any point is given by

(2-6)

where i is the current in the wire and T is the tension in the wire. [To see this, consider part (c) of Fig. 2-2. The magnetic force on the segment of wire is BirΔθ, since the length of the segment is rΔθ. This force is radially outward and must be balanced by the radially inward components of the tension forces T, T, each of which is of magnitude T Thus 2T and Eq. (2-6) follows immediately.] This is exactly analogous to Eq. (2-2). Consequently, if such a wire is placed in the field and its outer end is adjusted vertically until its inner end is horizontal so as to match the conditions of the beam of positive rays, it will position itself along the curve given by

and its outer end will be at a distance y1 from the horizontal axis given by

(2-7)

Dividing Eq. (2-7) into Eq. (2-5a) gives

from which not only the unknown function f(l + d) but also the reference value B0 has been eliminated. Actually, to allow the use of the relations involved without having to obtain one or another of y1, i, or T for every value of B0 used, it is simpler to leave in the value B0w used with the wire and write

or

(2-8)

Fig. 2-2. Geometrical considerations for calculating deflections of the positive rays: (a) case of the electric field; (b) case of the uniform magnetic field; (c) case of the wire under tension.

The application of the method is shown in Fig. 2-3. "The part of the tube through which the rays pass was cut off, and a metal rod placed so that its tip Z coincided with the aperture of the narrow tube through which the positive rays had emerged. A very fine wire soldered to the end of this tube passed over a light pulley, and carried a weight at the free end. The pulley was supported by a screw by means of which it could be raised or lowered; a known current passed through the wire, entering it at Z and leaving it through the pulley. The pulley was first placed so that the path of the stretched wire when undeflected by a magnetic field coincided with the path of the undeflected rays. A vertical scale whose edge was the same distance from the opening through which the rays emerge as the screen on which the phosphorescence had been observed, was placed just behind the wire, and was read by a reading microscope with a micrometer eyepiece.... To ensure that the tangent to the wire is horizontal when z = 0, the following method is used. P is a chisel-edge carried by a screw and placed about 1 mm in front of the fixed end of the wire; this is adjusted so that when the magnetic field is not on the wire just touches the edge: this can be ascertained by making the contact with the wire complete an electric circuit in which