Your bodily hormones like Oestrogen, Aldosterone, Renin, Progesterone, Luteinzing Hormone, Adrenaline, Noradrenaline, Angiotensin, Gonadotropin-Releasing Hormone, Cortisol and Cholesterol that often exists in temporarily large concentrations in reproductive functions, digestive functions and fight-or-flight response always contains these 4 gaseous elements: Oxygen, Hydrogen, Carbon and Nitrogen. These 4 elements bond to one another in different ways giving extraordinary and unique chemical structures like cyclic rings and single/double/triple bonds. These bonds are termed 'covalent bonds’. A covalent bond is formed between the sharing of delocalised valence electrons on the outer orbital shells of adjacent atoms. The term covalence in the context of chemical bonding was first used in 1919 by Irving Langmuir in an article inside the “Journal of the American Chemical Society”, The Arrangement of Electrons in Atoms and Molecules. The concept of covalent bonding traces back a few years before 1919 (don’t know when exactly) to Gilbert. N Lewis in 1916. That is why we refer to electron dot notation you learn in chemistry class as Lewis notation to illustrate the relevant valence electrons as dots around the atomic symbols.
What intrigues me is that the electron is the smallest hence lightest of the subatomic particles, smaller than the Proton and Neutron that make up the bulb of every atomic nucleus. It is also the most mobile in a stable atom when you observe it spinning and orbiting in respective subshells of variant energy levels. Towards the end of the 19th century in 1896, British physicist Joseph J.Thomson accompanied by his colleagues John S. Townsend and H. A. Wilson, performed experiments on electric discharges at Cavendish laboratory in Cambridge, England. Although previous experiments were similarly performed by other physicists like Johann Wilhelm Hittorf, Eugen Goldstein, Sir William Crookes, Arthur Schuster and Hendrik Lorentz, they couldn’t agree on a plausible explanation based on their observations. What they observed was when a high voltage was applied in a gas volume at low pressure, a spectacular bright glow formed. It was known that the discharge and the glow in the gas were to due to some object or matter emitted from the cathode, the negative pole of the applied voltage. Thomson believed that the cathode rays were streams of high-speed particles rather than waves, atoms or molecules. He observed that the cathode rays were deflected by both electric and magnetic fields, meaning they were electrically charged. By thoroughly measuring their deflection, Thomson determined the ratio between the electric charge (e) and the mass (m) of the rays now known as e/m. This is his finding:
e/m = 1.8 x 10^-11 Coulombs/kg
By 1897, J. J. Thomson’s discovery was named, the electron, by George F. Fitzgerald and the name has since been accepted worldwide. The mass of an electron is approximately 9.109 x 10^-31 kg with an electric charge of -1.602 x 10^-19 Coulombs. Coulomb (Q), the unit of electric charge, was named after Charles-Augustin de Coulomb after his famous scientific law of electrostatic force of attraction and repulsion. The size or radius of an electron, known as Lorentz radius or the Thomson scattering length, is approximated to be 2.8179403227(19) x 10^-15 m, based on a classical (non-quantum) relativistic model of the electron. That means a sole electron is invisible to the naked eye and in our eye can we feel the full brunt of the electron impacting on our atoms. So far I haven’t found any plausible explanation as to why the electron is so small and yet it can traverse the universe and still continuously emit electrical energy. I’m also curious as to whether subatomic particles including the electron contain anything within them that allows them to generate unlimited electrical energy, but so far no one really knows. The best I could uncover for you is that protons and neutrons are made up of these minute particles called quarks, held together by gluons. However there is still debate on whether the inside of an electron contains anything at all. What do you think?
From the pixels on your computer and phone screens while you read this blog, to the copper wires in your home and the biochemical processes throughout your body from macroscopic to microscopic level, it seems to me that life would not be the same without electrons. Every inanimate object, living organism and plant on Earth and neighbouring planets, moons in our solar system, the Milky Way galaxy and neighbouring galaxies revolves around subatomic particles especially electrons. You and I are exposed to millions of electrons every day and although they are emitted as radiation, our absorbed dose from them will still be extremely minute that it’s inadequate to cause any biological harm whatsoever. Where did these electrons come from? How did it end up in an orbit of a invariant clump of protons and neutrons? Can the Big Bang Theory give us any guidelines or clues as to how these particles were made in the first place? Based on what I learnt in school, I thought that there cannot be any process, not even your sharpest knife or any nuclear explosion that can dissect a particle to extremely small proportions right up to the Planck length (1.616229(38) x 10^-35). All these questions about how we and everything and everyone else around us are made from these little things are still unanswered and they may never will be answered. I may be 21 years old but I might not be alive to see myself or someone else finally make a puzzle piece breakthrough that would finally answer the questions us humans dared to dream. But would answering those questions create even more questions about us and our universe? I feel there is no end to this like it’s the infinite questionnaire but that is something I would like to know about. Nevertheless, it is an opportunity to earn that deserved Nobel Prize and your name for the whole world to remember.
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