Properties of Cathode Rays
Like a wave, cathode rays travel in straight lines, and produce a shadow when obstructed by object. Ernest Rutherford demonstrated that rays could pass through thin metal foils, behavior expected of a particle. These conflicting properties caused disruptions when trying to classify it as a wave or particle. Crookes insisted it was a particle, while Hertz maintained it was a wave. The debate was resolved when an electric field was used to deflect the rays by J. J. Thomson. This evidence that the beams were composed of particles was strong because scientists knew it was impossible to deflect electromagnetic waves with an electric field.
Louis de Broglie later (1924) showed in his doctoral dissertation that electrons are in fact much like photons in the respect that they act both as waves and as particles in a dual manner as Einstein had shown earlier for light. The wave-like behaviour of Cathode Ray particles was later directly demonstrated using a crystal lattice by Davisson and Germer in 1927.
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“A drop of water has the properties of the sea, but cannot exhibit a storm. There is beauty of a concert, as well as of a flute; strength of a host, as well as of a hero.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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