Page:LangevinStLouis.djvu/25

 are always identical with one another in all their properties, whatever may be the matter which has furnished them. We have already seen how the direct measurement of the charge leads always to the same result, The mass, both the longitudinal and transverse mass, having the same value for small velocities, can be determined by the measurement of the ratio of the charge to the mass.

The results obtained for this ratio in the case of cathode rays show some quite marked divergences when different methods of measurement are employed. The first values were given by J. J. Thomson by combining the magnetic deviation of the rays with a measurement of the energy which they possess by means of the heat produced in a thermoelectric couple which receives them, or by combining this magnetic deviation with the deviation in an electrostatic field. The ratio e/m furnished by this second method, the more accurate of the two, is approximately 107 electromagnetic units C.G.S.

Another method first pointed out by Schuster was used successively by Kaufmann and Simon. It consists in combining the magnetic deviation with the measurement of the difference of potential under which the rays are produced, considering that this difference of potential is that which exists between the cathode and anode. This hypothesis admitted, the method is capable of great accuracy, and the results which it gives appear to agree with the limiting values, for small velocities of the ratio e/m for the β rays, although the method employed by Kaufmann in this last measurement is different from that of Schuster. The number obtained by Simon is 1.865 x 100, nearly double that of J. J. Thomson. The explanation proposed by the latter for this disagreement, according to which the cathode rays are not produced by the total difference of potential between the cathode and the anode, but originate in a region situated in front of the cathode, does not, however, appear satisfactory, since it does not account for the constancy of the results of Kaufmann and Simon when the conditions of the experiment, the difference of potential in particular, were varied between large limits.

A means of deciding the question would consist in performing a type of experiment already used by Lenard, by subjecting the cathode rays, after their production, to a supplementary and known fall of potential, and determining by the modification which would result in their magnetic deviation the initial fall of potential under which they had been produced.

(34) The Cathode Corpuscle. However it may be, we can, owing to the results of Kaufmann, affirm the identity of the cathode rays already found independent of the gas and the electrode contained in the Crookes tube, with the β rays of radium. The measurements