Q. Describe in brief the discharge of electricity through a gas.

or,

[su_heading size=”17″]Q. Describe with a neat diagram of the phenomenon of electrical discharge through gases.[/su_heading]

Ans: We know that the gases are good insulators of electricity at normal pressure and temperature. But, we can make them conducting by:

• Applying very high voltage (~30,000 V/cm)
• Reducing its pressure to a very low value (~ 0.01 mm of Hg)

By imposing the above conditions to the gases, they split into the charged particles, called ions, both positive and negative and hence the electric current flows through them which is known as electrical conduction or discharge in the gas. We use the glass tube to study the electrical conduction through gases at low pressure called the discharge tube. This experiment was conducted initially by Sir William Crookes, Thomson, and many others.

Experimental set-up:

The experimental set-up consists of a strong glass tube of about 0.5 m long and 0.0 m in diameters, closed at both ends and provided with two platinum electrodes A and C, called anode and cathode respectively. These two electrodes are connected to the secondary terminals of a powerful induction coil. The discharge tube is connected with a vacuum pump to reduce the pressure inside the tube and pressure gauge to measure the pressure inside the tube as shown in the figure below.

                                     Fig: Discharge of electricity through gases at low pressure.

As the pressure inside the discharge tube is gradually decreased with the help of pressure gauge, the following phenomena are observed as discussed below:

(i) At a pressure about 10 mm of Hg:

When the pressure in the discharge tube is reduced to about 10 mm of Hg, the discharge occurs in the tube showing luminous streaks between the electrodes A and C, these streaks are called blue streamers which are produced with cracking noise.

(ii) At a pressure about 5 mm of Hg:

At this pressure inside the tube, the blue streaks broaden out in a luminous column which is bright and steady and this column is called Geissler’s discharge. The color of the discharge depends on the nature of the gas.

(iii) At a pressure of 2 mm of Hg:

In this case, a long luminous column appears from A to C inside the tube and this column is called the positive column. Again, the color of the discharge depends on the nature of the gas. For eg: blue for hydrogen and red for air.

(iv) At a pressure of 1 mm of Hg:

When the pressure inside the tube is reduced to 1 mm of Hg, the positive column leaves the cathode and moves to the anode. A blue luminous glow appears at a cathode called a negative glow. A dark space appears between the positive column and negative glow which is called Faraday’s dark space as shown below;

(v) At a pressure of 0.5 mm of Hg:

As the pressure inside the discharge tube is further reduced to about 0.5 mm of Hg, the size of the positive column gets reduced whereas the  Faraday’s dark space extends to a longer size. The negative glow leaves the cathode and another glow appears on the cathode called cathode glow. The negative glow moves towards the anode. Also, another dark space appears between cathode glow and negative glow which is known as Crooke’s dark space.

(vi) At a pressure of 0.05 mm of Hg: 

In this range of pressure, the positive column further shortens and breaks into an alternative bright and dark disc called striations as shown below;

(vii) At a pressure of about 0.01 mm of Hg: 

In this reduced pressure inside the discharge tube, initially, the striations disappear, and then negative and cathode glow vanishes. Then the whole tube is filled with Crooke’s dark space. At this situation, the luminous rays are seen to come out of the cathode which are called cathode rays.

In this way, the cathode rays are produced. If the pressure in the tube is reduced further, the tube stops conducting.

[su_heading size=”17″]Cathode rays: [/su_heading]

What are the cathode rays? write its properties. [imp: 2 marks]

Ans: Cathode rays are the invisible rays emerging normally from the cathode of a discharge tube, kept at a pressure of 0.01 mm of Hg, and under a very high potential difference of the order of several thousand volts (10-15 KV). These rays are independent of the nature of gas and their propagation is independent of the position of the anode.

Properties of cathode rays:

1. Cathode rays are emitted normally from the surface of the cathode.
2. Cathode rays can penetrate the small thickness of matter such as sheets of aluminum foil.
3. They can travel in a straight line and cast sharp shadows of the targets placed in their path.
4. They carry negative charge so are deflected by electric and magnetic fields.
5. They carry momentum and kinetic energy.
6. They produce heat when they fall upon the matter.

Reference: Principle of physics, Ayam publication.

I would like to welcome him in this session to talk about  recent developments in cosmology.

• Professor Krauss, you are very busy person. How do you manage your time?

Professor Krauss: I try and agree to do many different things, and then juggle them one at a time. I find that if I don’t have a lot to do, I sometimes do very little. I tend to focus intensively on one thing at a time, and work through the list. Sometimes I have to focus on 3 or 4 very different things in a single day, but I actually like the variety as well.

• Dear Professor, first of all I would like to Congratulate for your recent book publication “The Greatest Story Ever Told…So Far” , how do you introduce this book to laymen what is the greatest story in this book?

Professor Krauss: “It is the story of the remarkable effort humans have made to understand the fundamental forces that govern nature, and to strip back the illusion of reality that we experience on human scales to understand the underlying structure beneath it.”

 

• It is said that life in the Universe can occur only when certain universal dimensionless physical constants lie within a very narrow range. In what sense, if any, is the universe fine-tuned? What conclusions should we draw from the existence of fine-tuning?

Professor Krauss: “The Universe isn’t fine tuned for life. Life is fine-tuned for the universe. If the parameters of the universe were different perhaps different life forms might be possible. Moreover, even quantities like the energy of empty space, which seems to be so small compared to the value it might have, and which, if it were any larger, would not allow galaxies to have formed, could nevertheless have been much smaller and the universe would be more conducive to life. And a value of zero for this quantity would seem very natural indeed.”

• Prof. Krauss, I kindly expect your answer in my personal question arising while going through your another famous book “A Universe from Nothing” which contains an argument, why there is something rather than nothing. How can you explain it to a non-physicist, how the universe can be created out of nothing?

Professor Krauss: “Well, quantum mechanics allows for the spontaneous emission of particles like photons, the particles that make up light, whenever an electron changes its state in an atom. The photon appears from nothing. It was not in the atom before it was emitted. It simply appeared. Similarly, it turns out that elementary particles can spontaneously appear in empty space, once again due to the properties of quantum mechanics, this time in combination with relativity. If gravity is a quantum theory, then the variables that gravity describes, space and time, become quantum mechanical in nature, and whole space-times can appear spontaneously. This means that whole universes can appear that did not exist before. And it turns out our universe has the properties that one would expect from a universe that spontaneously appeared from nothing in this way.”

• Do you agree that “philosophy” is the best way to understand Physics and Nature?

Professor Krauss: “Natural-Philosophy, what we now call Science is the best, and I believe, the only reliable way to understand how the physical universe operates.”

 

• If time (or space) is infinite, everything that can happen has already happened, even down to me typing these words, and there is no change, only cycles of varying lengths. But how could time not be infinite? How can there be no state of being at all?

Professor Krauss: “Our universe had, as far as we can tell, a beginning, about 13.8 billion years ago. As far as we can tell, both space and time may have begun then. Now, as far as we can tell, our universe may expand forever. So in that sense time could be infinite..(or as we say in physics or mathematics, semi-infinite). And it is true that if our universe exists into the indefinite future then many strange aspects of infinity, including the possible repetition of everything we experience, an infinite number of times, for separate versions of us, might be possible. But we certainly don’t know if this is the case, and the conditions of the future universe could change so that life forms like us could not exist in the far future in any case.”

 

• Once you have said “String theory doesn’t really make any predictions at this point because it’s still an evolving idea”, is there any significant development in this idea?

Professor Krauss: “There has been a lot of mathematical development, and interest techniques have been developed that have been useful in other areas of physics. But fundamentally my earlier statement remains the same.”

• You say that you are an atheist. How do you define atheism? Are you an atheist because of your scientific consciousness?

Professor Krauss: “An atheist is simply someone who finds the argument for God unconvincing. Everything I have learned as a scientist over the past 35 years makes God not only seems highly unlikely, but largely redundant even if such an entity did exist. There is no evidence for miracles, and the laws of physics describe the history of the universe back to the earliest moments of the big bang without supernatural shenanigans.”

• Professor, Is “Dishonest” the only word for someone who believes in god despite being a scientist?

Professor Krauss: “No, I don’t think so. A vague ‘deist’ notion.. Assuming some purpose or order in the universe determined by some unknown intelligence, cannot be refuted by science. It is just unnecessary. But the Gods of the world’s major religions are all not in accord with our scientific understanding of nature. I wouldn’t call it dishonesty. Religion is foisted on young people, and it is hard to overcome.. We all tend to believe in mutually contradictory things at one time or another.”

 

• Professor, let we discuss about the global scenario, In January 2017, the Doomsday Clock is set at two and a half minutes to midnight, due to a rise of strident nationalism worldwide, US President Donald Trump’s comments over North Korea, Russia, nuclear weapons, and the disbelief in the scientific consensus over climate change by the Trump Administration. What is the real picture of our planet at this point? Are we heading towards world war III?

Professor Krauss: “Who knows? The world is a dangerous place, and we have to wake up to those dangers and begin to think globally. As Einstein said many years ago after the first nuclear explosion, “Everything has changed, save the way we think”. Unfortunately our thinking remains the same.”

• In the end, What is your message to Science enthusiast of coming generation?

Professor Krauss: “Keep doing what you love. Don’t get discouraged by others. Work hard, and enjoy discussing your work with others. .”

Thank you so much professor Krause for providing me your valuable time to talk about science.

For more about Prof. Krauss go through the following Links:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_M._Krauss
• http://krauss.faculty.asu.edu
• https://www.richarddawkins.net/2015/10/lawrence-krauss-explains-why-science-trumps-religion-in-illegal-broadcast-to-iranians/