ELECTRON • FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • Definition of Electron

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noun

Electron n.

1.

Amber; also, the alloy of gold and silver, called electrum. (archaic)

2.

(Physics & Chem.) One of the fundamental subatomic particles, having a negative charge and about one thousandth the mass of a hydrogen atom. The electron carries (or is) a natural unit of negative electricity, equal to 3.4 x 10^(-10) electrostatic units, and is classed by physicists as a lepton. Its mass is practically constant at the lesser speeds, but increases due to relativistic effects as the velocity approaches that of light. Electrons are all of one kind, so far as is known. Thus far, no structure has been detected within an electron, and it is probably one of the ultimate composite constituents of all matter. An atom or group of atoms from which an electron has been detached has a positive charge and is called a cation. Electrons are projected from the cathode of vacuum tubes (including television picture tubes) as cathode rays and from radioactive substances as the beta rays. Previously also referred to as corpuscle, an obsolete term. The motion of electrons through metallic conductors is observed as an electric current. A particle identical to the electron in mass and most other respects, but having a positive instead of a negative charge, is called a positron, or antielectron

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Etymology of 'Electron'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Electron" Quotes from Famous Books

... volatile parts. On distillation with volatile alcaly all these fossil oils are shewn to contain the acid of amber, which evinces the identity of their origin. If a piece of amber be rubbed it attracts straws and hairs, whence the discovery of electricity, and whence its name, from electron the Greek ...

— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... published 5 years before discovery of the electron. See the labored and completely inaccurate explanations of aurora and "energy, atomic". The author and his contemporaries were like fifteenth century sailors. They had a good idea of their latitude and direction (Ampere, Kirkoff, Maxwell, Gauss, ...

— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone

... of Life resembles the life history of the smallest things we know of, the electrons, and the largest, the great suns and stars of space. The electron begins, perhaps, as a swirl in the primeval ether, joins other electrons, forms colonies, cities, empires, elements of an increasing complexity, through stages of a relative stability, like lead or gold. Until it reaches the stage of integration which wills its own disintegration, ...

— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.

... by Hertz and his immediate successors that light has a remarkable power of discharging negative electrification from the surface of bodies—especially from certain substances. For long no explanation of the cause of this appeared. But the electron—the ubiquitous electron—is now known with considerable certainty to be responsible. The effect of the electric force in the light wave is to direct or assist the electrons contained in the substance to escape from the ...

— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly

... exact due to disturbance caused by the investigation of its whereabouts. My humble attempt is to secure a sufficiently statistical sample of aligned protons to obtain data on the distortion of the electron orbits caused by an external electrostatic field, thus rendering my own uncertainties more susceptible of analysis in ...

— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond

... . . a necklace of fine gold to sell, With bright electron linked right wondrously ...

— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson

... Ionization.—A hydrogen atom is not only lighter but it is smaller than the atom of any other element while an electron is more than a thousand times smaller than the atom of which it is a part. Now as long as all of the electrons remain attached to the surface of an atom its positive and negative charges are equalized and it will, therefore, be neither positive ...

— The Radio Amateur's Hand Book • A. Frederick Collins

Words linked to "Electron" : electron beam, electron paramagnetic resonance, valence electron, negatron, electron shell, photoelectron, electron gun, electron microscopy, electron optics, free electron, electron microscopic, electron microscope, electron accelerator, electron orbit, electron tube

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