Cathode Ray Tubes
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- Date Submitted: 11/20/2010 07:26 PM
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Cathode Ray Tubes
The first cathode ray tube was successfully invented by William Crookes. Crookes, an English chemist, passed an electric current through a tube containing air at low pressure (1). Before Crookes though, Micheal Faraday tried to pass an electric current through a tube, but was unsuccessful. The vacuum Faraday had was not strong enough for his voltage. Tubes with better vacuum than Faraday had at the time were available in Crookes time. Crookes was able to confirm the existence of cathode rays by displaying them, with his invention of the Crookes tube, a crude prototype for all future Cathode ray tubes (2).
The way the cathode ray tube works is that the tube has metal electrodes inside it where it’s connected to a vacuum pump, and most of the air is removed (1). A beam of current is seen as a green fluorescence, observed when the beam strikes a screen coated with zinc sulfide (1). When that happens the beam is attracted to the anode in the tube.
The cathode ray tube was built mainly to prove the existence of cathode rays. Not only did it help to prove the existence of cathode rays, but it also led to other scientific discoveries by other scientists. For example, Joseph John Thomson’s experiment involving cathode ray tubes showed that cathode rays were deflected in an electric field and that the beam was attracted to the positive plate and repelled by the negative plate (1). He also proved that cathode rays consisted of negatively charged particles and that the particles were the alike despite the materials from where the electrodes were made or the kind of gas that was in the tube. Thomson then named the negatively charged particles electrons. Since, Thomson measured the amount the negatively charged particles bounced back he was able to determine the mass...
The first cathode ray tube was successfully invented by William Crookes. Crookes, an English chemist, passed an electric current through a tube containing air at low pressure (1). Before Crookes though, Micheal Faraday tried to pass an electric current through a tube, but was unsuccessful. The vacuum Faraday had was not strong enough for his voltage. Tubes with better vacuum than Faraday had at the time were available in Crookes time. Crookes was able to confirm the existence of cathode rays by displaying them, with his invention of the Crookes tube, a crude prototype for all future Cathode ray tubes (2).
The way the cathode ray tube works is that the tube has metal electrodes inside it where it’s connected to a vacuum pump, and most of the air is removed (1). A beam of current is seen as a green fluorescence, observed when the beam strikes a screen coated with zinc sulfide (1). When that happens the beam is attracted to the anode in the tube.
The cathode ray tube was built mainly to prove the existence of cathode rays. Not only did it help to prove the existence of cathode rays, but it also led to other scientific discoveries by other scientists. For example, Joseph John Thomson’s experiment involving cathode ray tubes showed that cathode rays were deflected in an electric field and that the beam was attracted to the positive plate and repelled by the negative plate (1). He also proved that cathode rays consisted of negatively charged particles and that the particles were the alike despite the materials from where the electrodes were made or the kind of gas that was in the tube. Thomson then named the negatively charged particles electrons. Since, Thomson measured the amount the negatively charged particles bounced back he was able to determine the mass...