Ernest Rutheford:
GO BACK
 Ernest Rutherford is
considered the father of nuclear physics. Indeed, it could be said that
Rutherford invented the very language to describe the theoretical concepts of
the atom and the phenomenon of radioactivity. Particles named and characterized
by him include the alpha particle, beta particle and proton. Even the neutron,
discovered by James Chadwick, owes its name to Rutherford. The exponential
equation used to calculate the decay of radioactive substances was first
employed for that purpose by Rutherford and he was the first to elucidate the
related concepts of the half-life and decay constant. With Frederick Soddy at
McGill University, Rutherford showed that elements such as uranium and thorium
became different elements (i.e. transmuted) through the process of radioactive
decay. At the time, such an incredible idea was not to be mentioned in polite
company: it belonged to the realm of alchemy, not science. For this work,
Rutherford won the 1908 Nobel Prize in chemistry. In 1909, now at the University
of Manchester, Rutherford was bombarding a thin gold foil with alpha particles
when he noticed that although almost all of them went through the gold, one in
eight thousand would "bounce" (i.e. scatter) back. The amazed
Rutherford commented that it was "as if you fired a 15-inch naval shell at
a piece of tissue paper and the shell came right back and hit you." From
this simple observation, Rutherford concluded that the atom's mass must be
concentrated in a small positively-charged nucleus while the electrons inhabit
the farthest reaches of the atom. Although this planetary model of the atom has
been greatly refined over the years, it remains as valid today as when it was
originally formulated by Rutherford. In 1919, Rutherford returned to Cambridge
to become director of the Cavendish Laboratory where he had previously done his
graduate work under J.J. Thomson. It was here that he made his final major
achievement, the artificial alteration of nuclear and atomic structure. By
bombarding nitrogen with alpha particles, Rutherford demonstrated the production
of a different element, oxygen. "Playing with marbles" is what he
called it; the newspapers reported that Rutherford had "split the
atom." After his death in 1937, Rutherford's remains were buried in
Westminster Abbey near those of Sir Isaac Newton.
 Rutheford's
Gold Leaf Experiment 
Neils
Bohr
Amedeo Avagadro
Antoine Lavoisier
William Proust
J.J.
Thomson
Sir William Crookes
Albert
Einstein
Ernest Rutheford
Max
Planck
John
Dalton
Dimitri Mendeleev
Hans Geiger
Jeff Christopherson
Democritus of Abdera, c. 450 BCE
Additional Information
Last modified
Contact us for more info
|
|
