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William Crookes Essay

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A man by the name of William Crookes was one of the main contributors to the new fields of physics and chemistry that emerged in the late 19th century. Crookes’ analysis of the photographic process in the 1850s inspired his work in the science of spectroscopy. Using techniques of spectroscopy Crookes discovered the element thallium. His efforts in discovering the weight of thallium in an evacuated chamber led to his research in vacuum physics.
When Crookes was sixteen he entered the Royal College of Chemistry. He studied under August Wilhelm von Hofmann as an assistant in 1851. A few years later while attending a meeting at the Royal Institution, Crookes met the physicist Michael Faraday, who convinced him to switch his specialty to physics …show more content…

In doing so, Crookes needed to use vacuum tubes. By placing a miniscule amount of thallium within a vacuum tube, Crookes would be able to weigh it to obtain a precise measurement. In determining the accurate atomic weight, he constructed a vacuum chamber. While attempting to obtain precise measurements, he noticed the unnatural behavior of his balance in the vacuum. In response to the irregular balance, Crookes invented a device in 1873 called a radiometer. The radiometer is a light bulb-shaped device containing an object that resembles the figure of a weather vane, with black on one side to absorb radiant energy and polished silver on the other to reflect …show more content…

After the series of séances, Crookes began to explore spiritualism. Once Crookes began to talk about his encounters with ghosts to his more traditional scientific colleagues, they ended up feeling that he had lost all form of neutrality and became too attached to the spirits. After 1875 Crookes stopped all tests to contact spirits and all other paranormal phenomena, however; he still supported the Society for Psychical Research and served as the president in

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