According to Thomson’s model, how are electrons arranged in an atom?
Embedded in a positively charged sphere like seeds in a watermelon
J.J. Thomson, who discovered the electron in 1897, proposed his atomic model in 1904. It is popularly called the Plum Pudding Model (or the watermelon model in Indian textbooks). According to it:
- The atom is a sphere of uniformly spread positive charge.
- The much smaller, negatively charged electrons are embedded within this positive sphere, just as plums are scattered through a pudding or seeds are embedded in the red flesh of a watermelon.
- The positive and negative charges are equal in magnitude, so the atom as a whole is electrically neutral.
This picture matches the correct option — electrons embedded in a positively charged sphere like seeds in a watermelon.
The other choices describe features that belong to later or incorrect models. Electrons moving in fixed orbits around the nucleus is the Rutherford–Bohr picture, which only came after the 1911 gold-foil experiment revealed a tiny dense nucleus — Thomson's model had no nucleus at all. Electrons orbiting around neutrons is wrong on two counts, since the neutron was not even discovered until 1932 and does not sit at an orbital centre. Electrons randomly placed inside the nucleus contradicts the very idea of a diffuse positive sphere with electrons stuck in it. Thomson's model was ultimately superseded because it could not explain why alpha particles were sometimes deflected through large angles.
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