J. J. Thomson and the Discovery of Electrons

He loved to laugh. He loved to make up silly songs to make his students laugh, too. But he also loved to think, and find out the answers to scientific puzzles. It didn t matter if the questions were asked by a seven-year-old boy or a famous scientist. J. J. Thomson thought that they were all worth answering.

Of course, there was one little problem with his research: J. J. was brilliant, but he was also clumsy. Test tubes broke in his hands and experiments refused to work. Once a beaker even exploded in his face, nearly blinding him. But all those accidents didn’t stop him. He was a terrific professor. All his students loved him, and learned from him. And if J. J. had to build his own equipment so that he could examine the atom, then he would do it. When he did, he would discover something about the atom that no one else had ever expected.