Carl Jackson, age 14, of Nampa, Ids., for his question:
CAN YOU EXPLAIN THE ELECTRON?
An electron is a particle of negative electricity. It is one of the particles of which all atoms are made. Electrons can be found in the atmosphere, in any object or on any surface and they can also be found where there is no matter, as in a vacuum.
Electrons are all small, and they are the same size. Are you ready for a really big number? Well, an electron is so small that it will take 30,000 million million million million of them to weigh only one ounce.
An electron is the smallest known unit of electrical charge. A single hydrogen atom will weigh 1,836 times more than a single electron.
Yet despite its small size, the electron is a powerful servant for man. The electric current that is used in homes and in industry is made up of a flow of electrons through a copper wire, the conductor. A 50 watt light bulb has about 3 billion billion electrons passing through it every second.
Scientists tail us that the electron is one of the basic building blocks of the world. The atoms of all elements contain them.
A British scientist named G. Johnstone Stoney is the man who gave the electron its nave. He took it from "elektron," the Greek word for amber, which can be rubbed to produce electricity.
In 1897 a British physicist named Sir Joseph Thompson discovered that electrons carry electrical current. He also discovered that they have a negative charge.
An American physicist named Robert Millikan in 1907 measured the electron's charge. Ana in that same year, an American physicist named Clinton Daviason and a British physicist named George Thompson discovered independently that electrons sometimes behave like waves.
Electrons can be forced to move by an electromotive force. Moving electrons make an electric current. They carry telephone messages, light homes and supply power to electric motors.
Movement of electrons through vacuum tubes and the circuits of radio transmitters and receivers makes broadcasting possible.
All matter is made up of atoms consisting of electrons around an atomic nucleus of positive particles, or protons, and neutral particles, or neutrons.
No one has ever seen one of these particles, but electrons and protons can be detected by the trails they leave in moist air.
Electrons rotate in orbits around the positive nucleus much as the Earth and other planets circle the sun. An atom is, therefore, a sort of small solar system.
Six basic sources of energy can be used to move electrons to make an electric current: friction, pressure, magnetism, heat, chemical action and light.