1927 – Germany

‘It is impossible to determine exactly both the position and momentum of a particle (such as an electron) simultaneously’

The principle excludes the existence of a particle that is stationary.

To measure both the position and momentum ( momentum = mass × velocity ) of a particle simultaneously requires two measurements: the act of performing the first measurement will disturb a particle and so create uncertainty in the second measurement.
Thus the more accurately a position is known; the less accurately can the momentum be determined.

The disturbance is so small it can be ignored in the macroscopic world, but is quite dramatic for particles in the microscopic world.
MAX BORN’S ‘probabilistic’ interpretation, expressed at about the same time, concerning the likelihood of finding a particle at any point through probability defined by the amplitude of its associated wave, led to similar conclusions.

The uncertainty principle also applies to energy and time. A particle’s kinetic energy cannot be measured with complete precision either.

Heisenberg suggested the model of the proton and neutron being held together in the nucleus of the atom after the work of JAMES CHADWICK who discovered the neutron in 1932.

Heisenberg decided to try to develop a new model of the atom, more fundamentally based on quantum theory that worked for all atoms. He believed the approach of trying to visualise a physical model of the atom was destined to fail because of the paradoxical wave-particle nature of electrons.

Every particle has an associated wave. The position of a particle can be precisely located where the wave’s undulations are most intense. But where the wave’s undulations are most intense, the wavelength is also at its most ill-defined, and the velocity of the associated particle is impossible to determine. Similarly, a particle with a well-defined wavelength has a precise velocity but a very ill-defined position.

Since the orbits of electrons could not be observed, he decided to ignore them and focus instead on what could be observed and measured; namely the energy they emitted and absorbed, as shown in the spectral lines. He tried to devise a mathematical way of representing the orbits of electrons, and to use this as a way of predicting the atomic features shown up in the spectral lines.
He showed that matrix mechanics could account for many of the properties of atoms, including those with more than one electron.

Together with PAUL DIRAC, Pascual Jordan created a new set of equations based on the rival theories of Schrödinger and Heisenberg, which they called ‘transformation theory’. Whilst studying these equations, Heisenberg noticed the paradox that measurements of position and velocity (speed and direction) of particles taken at the same time gave imprecise results. He believed that this uncertainty was a part of the nature of the sub-atomic world. The act of measuring the velocity of a subatomic particle will change it, making the simultaneous measurement of its position invalid.

An unobserved object is both a particle and a wave. If an experimenter chooses to measure the object’s velocity, the object will transform itself into a wave. If an experimenter chooses to measure its position, it will become a particle. By choosing to observe either one thing or the other, the observer is actually affecting the form the object takes.
The practical implication of this is that one can never predict where an electron will be at a precise moment, one can only predict the probability of its being there.

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FRANCIS ASTON (1877-1945)

1922 – England

‘At the end of the First War, the assistant of JJ THOMSON developed the mass spectrograph for measuring the comparative weights of atoms’

Early Mass Spectrometer

Early Mass Spectrometer

Photo portrait of FRANCIS ASTON ©


Whereas Thomson had used a discharge tube to measure the deflection of atomic particles passing through a hole in the anode, Aston refined the instrument by placing photographic plates in the path of the beams emerging through a hole in the cathode. These rays proved to be much harder to deflect from their course, implying they were made of particles thousands of times heavier than electrons, with masses close to those of atoms. These particles were deflected in opposite directions to negative cathode rays, indicating that they carried a positive charge.

Hence hurtling in one direction down a discharge tube were cathode ray electrons occasionally colliding with the atoms of the rarefied gas filling the tube. Drifting in the other direction – much more sluggishly because of their larger mass – were positive gas atoms, or ‘ions’, stripped of an electron or two in the collisions.

Once perfected, this mass spectrograph offered a means of deciding the mass of these atoms to an accuracy of 1 part in 100,000. This was enough to distinguish the existence of different isotopes and to confirm that the ‘rule of thumb’ – that masses of atoms were roughly whole number multiples of the mass of hydrogen – was in actuality accurate.
What it had confirmed was that the fundamental building block had the same mass as the proton, or hydrogen nucleus. When the mass spectrograph was first devised, the proton was the only particle with the mass of a proton, as the neutron was yet to be described by JAMES CHADWICK.

When comparisons of atomic mass were made, the oxygen atom was chosen as the standard with a mass of 16.
Today carbon is used as the atomic mass standard with a weight of 12.

Using this standard it was discovered that although the ratios of atomic masses were indistinguishable from whole numbers, helium being 4, oxygen 16, the atomic mass of hydrogen was anomalously high, being 1.008. The conclusion as to why this should be so had been suggested in the nineteenth century but before Einstein had found little support. After the famous paper of 1905, however, it was not unreasonable to suggest that when hydrogen atoms came together or coalesced to form other elements, mass was lost as energy.

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