Our Atomic World - The Story of Atomic Energy

 Nuclear energy is playing a vital role in the life of every man, woman, and child in the United States today. In the years ahead it will affect increasingly all the peoples of the earth. The name “electron” was given to the small negative particles identified by Thomson. Since the electrons had come from the cathode, it was apparent that the atoms in the cathode must contain electrons. Thomson reasoned that electric current in a wire is a stream of electrons passing successively from atom to atom and that the difference between an electrically charged atom and a neutral atom is that the charged one has gained or lost one or more electrons.