The words are all arbitrary - - - BUT electrons have a "negative" charge and are attracted to a positive voltage. (Opposites attract.)
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Electrodes, the positive side is called the Cathode and the Negative side is called the Anode.The anode and cathode. The anode is positively charged and the cathode is negative.
The Cathode is the negative electrode; the anode is the positive electrode
The particles originate from the Cathode in the neck of the tube. They are liberated by a heater. The electrons thus liberated are attracted by the Anode, by applying a high voltage to it. In a CRT there are several anodes, the largest and biggest is formed by a coating inside the tube towards the screen. This attracts and accelerates the electrons in a stream of particles known as a 'cathode ray'. They carry on in a straight line, once accelerated, until they hit the screen and cause a phosphor coating to glow, on the inside surface of the screen. The cathode ray can be bent from it's course, by using electromagnets arranged around the neck of the tube.
Anode rays differ from cathode rays in several aspects and their specific charge(charge/mass or e/m ratio) is an important feature. The reason lies in how anode rays are produced. Anode rays are produced when a gas at low pressure is subjected to a high voltage(10,000 Volts). Under these conditions, the atoms of the gas get ionized, i.e. they lose some electrons and thus become cations(positive ions). It is a stream of these positive ions that become 'anode rays'. However, the atomic masses of different gases are different and hence, the mass of anode ray particles varies when you use different gases in the discharge tube and hence, the charge/mass ratio also varies. Whereas, in the case of cathode rays, the cathode ray particles are nothing but electrons. Their charge and mass is constant no matter what gas you use in the discharge tube. So, their charge/mass ratio remains constant. (ANSWER BY RIZWAN FROM PAKISTAN)
He is sometimes called the discoverer of protons. He did experiments with cathode ray tubes, which knock electrons off atoms and attract them to a positively-charged electrode (the cathode). He noticed that a second stream of particles was attracted to the negatively-charged electrode (the anode), so he called them anode rays. However, it was left to one of his students to discover that these rays were sometimes pure protons. His experiments gave him a picture of atomic structure that was decades ahead of its time, and similar to what we know today. However, he did not follow up on his work, and was largely ignored by his peers.