Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Log in
S P AR K C O L L E G E College Admissions M odern P hys ic s << RETURN TO THE PREVIOUS SECTION | CONTINUE TO THE NEXT SECTION >> Financial Aid College Lif e
SPECIAL RELATIVITY THE DISCOVERY OF THE ATOM QUANTUM PHYSICS NUCLEAR PHYSICS
electrons are negatively charged, the electrons were expected to alter slightly the trajectory of the alpha particles. The experiment would be like rolling a basketball across a court full of marbles: when the basketball hits a marble, it might deflect a bit to the side, but, because it is much bigger than the marbles, its overall trajectory will not be affected very much. Rutherford expected the deflection to be relatively small, but sufficient to indicate how electrons are distributed throughout the plum pudding atom. To Rutherfords surprise, most of the alpha particles were hardly deflected at all: they passed through the gold foil as if it were just empty space. Even more surprising was that a small number of the alpha particles were deflected at 180, right back in the direction they came from.
This unexpected result shows that the mass of an atom is not as evenly distributed as Thompson and others had formerly assumed. Rutherfords conclusion, known as the Rutherford nuclear model, was that the mass of an atom is mostly concentrated in a nucleus made up of tightly bonded protons and neutrons, which are then orbited by electrons. The electromagnetic force pulls the electrons into orbit around the nucleus in just the way that the gravitational force pulls planets into orbit around the sun. The radius of an atoms nucleus is about 11 0,000 the radius of the atom itself. As a result, most of the alpha particles in Rutherfords gold foil experiment passed right through the sheet of gold foil without making contact with anything. A small number, however, bumped into the nucleus of one of the gold atoms and bounced right back.
<< RETURN TO THE PREVIOUS SECTION | CONTINUE TO THE NEXT SECTION >> Help | Feedback | Make a request | Report an error
M odern P hys ic s
When your books and teachers dont make sense, we do. Contact Us | Privacy Policy | Terms and Conditions | About | Sitemap | Advertise Fiction Books | Textbooks | eTextbooks | Classic Books | Used Books | Teen Books | nook | eReader 2011 SparkNotes LLC, All Rights Reserved