• Question: who discovered the particles?

    Asked by weirdboblet to Carol, Ellie, John, Philip, Rebecca on 25 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Eleanor Turpin

      Eleanor Turpin answered on 25 Jun 2012:

      Hi weirdboblet

      A scientist callled J J Thompson discovered electrons in 1897 and a few years later Ernest Rutherford found out that there was a dense nucleus at the center of an atom with the electrons surrounding the outside.

      Quarks, tiny sub-atomic particles that combine to make protons and neutrons, were discovered by Burton Richter and Samual Ting in 1974, but had been predicted 10 years before that. Quarks come in pairs and the six types are called up, down, top, bottom, charm and strange.

    • Photo: John Welford

      John Welford answered on 27 Jun 2012:

      Just to expand on Ellies answer, the vague idea of atoms (but not the particles that make them up) has been around as an idea since around 450BCE.

      But it was Robert Boyle that first properly described atoms in 1661 and then it wasn’t until 1865 that Johann Josef Loschmidt was actually able to measure the size of air molecules.

    • Photo: Carol White

      Carol White answered on 27 Jun 2012:

      And as an extra: hopefully the researchers at CERN will find what they’re looking for.. the Higgs boson! They’re releasing a statement in early July so keep watching the news!

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