Mayer, Alfred

Thomson based h(s configurations on the work of fin American physicist, Alfred Mayer, who had experimented wilh magnets attached to corks and floated In a circular basin of water. When five magnets were placed in the water, for example, they formed a single ring The ad-... 

Figure 3. Alfred Mayer s experiments with magnets floating in water (illustrated in one of his publications with this sketch) were the template J. J. Thomson used to develop hi9 first electron configurations (see Figure 4. Mayer found that the magnets adopted different patterns depending on the number introduced, leading Thomson to suspect that similar principles would pertain to electron configurations.

Maria Goeppert-Mayer and Alfred L. Sklar, "Calculations of the Lower Excited Levels of Benzene," J.Chem.Physics 6 (1938) 645652. 

Mayer s floating magnets. From Alfred M. Mayer, On the Morphological Laws of the Configurations Formed by Magnets Floating Vertically and Subjected to the Attraction of a Superposed Magnet With Notes on Some of the Phenomena in Molecular Structure Which These Experiments May Serve to Explain, American Journal of Science,... 

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