The Autobiography of an Electron

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Gibson Charles Robert. The Autobiography of an Electron

PREFACE

CHAPTER I. WHAT THE STORY IS ABOUT

CHAPTER II. THE ELECTRON'S PREFACE

CHAPTER III. THE NEW ARRIVAL

CHAPTER IV. SOME GOOD SPORT

CHAPTER V. MY EARLIEST RECOLLECTIONS

CHAPTER VI. MAN PAYS US SOME ATTENTION

CHAPTER VII. A STEADY MARCH

CHAPTER VIII. A USEFUL DANCE

CHAPTER IX. HOW WE CARRY MAN'S NEWS

CHAPTER X. HOW WE COMMUNICATE WITH DISTANT SHIPS

CHAPTER XI. HOW WE REPRODUCE SPEECH

CHAPTER XII. OUR HEAVIEST DUTIES

CHAPTER XIII. A BOON TO MAN

CHAPTER XIV. HOW WE PRODUCE COLOUR

CHAPTER XV. WE SEND MESSAGES FROM THE STARS

CHAPTER XVI. HOW MAN PROVED OUR EXISTENCE

CHAPTER XVII. MY X-RAY EXPERIENCES

CHAPTER XVIII. OUR RELATIONSHIP TO THE ATOMS

CHAPTER XIX. HOW WE MADE THE WORLD TALK

CHAPTER XX. CONCLUSION

APPENDIX

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The reason for writing this story is given in the Preface, but the title is so strange that the reader will wish naturally to know what the story is about. What is an electron? Is it an imaginary thing, or is it a reality?

One of the reasons for writing this story in its present form is to help the reader to realise that electrons are not mythical, but real existing things, and by far the most interesting things we know anything about. The discovery of electrons has shed a new light upon the meaning of very many things which have been puzzles until now. They give us a reasonable explanation of the cause of light and colour. They provide a new idea of the constitution of matter. They enable us to picture an electric current, and they give us definite, though by no means final, answers to the why and wherefore of magnetism, chemical union, and radio-activity.

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To make the electron's story as realistic as possible, it has been necessary to give the imaginary electron perfect freedom of knowledge concerning itself and its surroundings. In our schooldays we had to write the autobiographies of steel pens, and such-like, but these inanimate things had to be endowed with powers of thought, feeling, and desire. It is very important, however, to remember that an electron is a particle of negative electricity —a real existing thing.

It does seem strange to us that men should be so distinctly different from one another. We electrons are at a decided disadvantage, for we are all identical in every respect. I have no individual name – it would serve no purpose. Even if you could see me, you could not distinguish me from any other electron. I wonder sometimes if men appreciate the great advantage they have in possessing individual names. I was impressed with this thought one fine summer morning. While I was riding on the back of a particle of gas in the atmosphere, I was carried through the open window of a nursery just as the under-nurse was putting the room in order. A little later there was some commotion in the nursery, for the young mother and her mother had come to see the twin daughters being bathed by the nurses. The grandmother happened to remark how very much alike the two little infants were. She said laughingly to the head nurse that she must be careful not to get the children mixed. But the big brother, aged five years, remarked that it would not matter really how much they were mixed until they got their names. Sometimes I wish we electrons did differ from one another, so that we might each possess an individual name, but no doubt it is necessary for us all to be exactly alike.

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