Hydrogen

Hydrogen atoms, tiny little things composed of one positive particle of electricity (the proton) and one madly whirling negative particle (the electron), which goes round and round its fellow just as the earth circles the sun, have been occupying the attention of physicists and chemists at Princeton University.

Last month, Professors Hugh S. Taylor and A. L. Marshall found that by bombarding hydrogen atoms with atoms of mercury energized by light, the hydrogen became so active chemically that it would unite directly with oxygen at ordinary temperatures to form hydrogen peroxide, a substance of great industrial value (it disinfects, bleaches) hitherto difficult and costly of preparation.

Last week, Professor Karl T. Compton reported that he had put molecular hydrogen into a tungsten tube, heated it to 2,800 degrees Centigrade, thereby dissociating it into atomic hydrogen, and shot into this a current of electrons from a hot filament similar to those used in a radio tube. The energy of this current was readily reckoned in volts, and as the voltage was increased things began to happen to the hydrogen atoms it encountered. Suddenly they began to emit radiation of a definite wavelength, measurable as a single line in a light spectrum. The hydrogen atoms had been excited, their electrons swinging out into wider, more madly rapid orbits. The voltage of the current was increased again, until a second line appeared in the spectrum, indicating that the hydrogen atoms had achieved a still higher state of excitement, were throwing off a new kind of light. Comparing the voltages employed to produce these effects, Dr. Compton found that the ratio checked exactly with the theoretic scale of atomic energies postulated a decade ago by the Dane, Niels Bohr, who got the 1922 Nobel prize for physics in payment for his pains. Dr. Compton's work was the first actual confirmation of Bohr's theory, the first laboratory demonstration of the only atomic mechanism of which man has an apparently complete picture.