It's almost Christmas, well the lights have started to go up and Ikea is selling decorations so it can't be far off. In our household this means it's time for the Christmas pudding ritual to begin. By Christmas pudding I mean the traditional British version also called Plum pudding. Yes, the one made famous by J.J. Thomson. The plum pudding model has -ve plums (electrons) surrounded by the +ve pudding. There are several problems with this model, firstly the plum pudding contains no plums. It has raisins, sultanas, currants even apple but no plums. The fruit that is in the pudding turns into a fairly homogeneous dark brown material that has little resemblance to the Thomson's picture of the atom, a closer resemblance would be a raisin bun or rosiner bolle as we call them in Norway.

When mixing the ingredients for Chritmas pudding it is traditional for all memmbers of the family to make a wish. I wonder what wish Thomson made? Seems like it didn't come true.

JJ Thomson