The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1901-05-13
SMALLER THAN ATOMS.
NEW THEORIES CONCERNING MAT
TER.
TER.
Hints Afforded by Old and Insignia
can't Phenomena.

A&Aht5 ALI NY OlN INV
emit Phenomena.
At recent meeting of the Chemica
society Lord Kelvin declared tina
science and the last science of the nine
teenth century," No doubt there is {
great deal of truth in that indeed, fol
the Iayman to argue against Lord KEEL
vim would be as rash as the Roman phil
osopher though It to conten with the
master of thirty legions, But there are
not a few indications that in the TWEEN
tieth century, at least, chemistry-if
like Stevenson's Shyster we may
''clothe our idea in somewhat vulgar
form"-will have to take a back seat
Its practical applications, such as Prb-
fessor Meldola indicated in his interest
ing lecture on the artificial manufac-
ture of indigo last Wednesday, will in
deed become steadily more important
until we reach that glorious time of
which M. Berthelot dreams in his wax
ing hours, when it will only be the
chemist in his laboratory who takes
thought wherewithal the world shall be
fed and clothed.
But in regard to the fundamental the~
cries on which chemistry has been
based since it left the hands Of the in
teresting, but exceedingly empirical. al
chemists, the future seems to be with
the more purely physical branches of
ecience, whose method is mathematical
analysis. The laboratory, with all its
reagents and it's bottles it's balances
and it's microscopes, is helpless in the
last resort when we come to discuss the
constitution of matter and the nature of
the world stuff Of which we and all our
environment are made. Such a lecture
as Professor ]. J. Thomson's discourse
yesterday at the Royal Institution,
The Existence of Bodies Smaller Than
Atoms" is a sign of the change to which
we allude.
1t is very difficult for most of us to re-
alize how a question of this kind can
lsIE4 .IelgMly I pIgMpH 'lu9pIssId
be raised at all. The atoms Of the
chemist are confessed to be, in the very
nature of things, beyond the ken of any
method of practical examination that
we can devise now, or that, SO far as
we can now see, man will ever be able
to adapt to his feeble and i'll adjusted
senses. We need never hope to see an
atom however. greatly we improve our
microscopes. All the advances that
Jena can make In the manufacture of
optical glass must be helpless here A
limit to the power Of the microscope is
fixed in nature, as Helmholtz showed,
by the length of the waves in the ether,
which we call light Now, we do not
quite know what is the size of the atom,
but we CANDY methods of analysis
which do not depend On actual measur-
ing-make reasonably good guess at
It. AS Lord Kelvin puts it, we may
take 1t for granted that, if a drop of
water could be magnified up to the size
Of the earth, the atoms which compose
It would then turn out to ba larger than
cricket balls. but smaller than footballs
TO bring these within the range of VI
sion is beyond the power of any Zeiss
or Quekett.
There are, however. other methods of
inquiry than those Of the senses I'm
fortunately they are mostly of such a
nature that it is hopeless to try and ex-
plain them in popular language; the
mathematical expressions Of which they
chiefly consist are quite untitled for
But it may be said that |
The student of molecular physics can
feel the atom trembling in the grip Of
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