Rutherfords Gold Foil Experiment :: essays research papers

Rutherfords Gold Foil investigateRutherford started his scientific career with much success in local schoolsleading to a light to Nelson College. After achieving more academichonors at Nelson College, Rutherford moved on to Cambridge UniversitysCavendish laboratory. There he was lead by his mentor J.J. Thomson convincedhim to study radiation. By 1889 Rutherford was manipulate to earn a living andsought a job. With Thomsons recommendation McGill University in Mont real numberaccepted him as a professor of chemistry. Upon performing many experiments andfinding impudent discoveries at McGill university, Rutherford was rewarded the nobelprize for chemistry. In 1907 he succeded Arthur Schuster at the University ofManchester. He began persuing alpha particles in 1908. With the help of Geigerhe found the number of alpha particles emitted per second by a gram of radium.He was also able to confirm that alpha particles cause a faint but discreteflash when striking light zinc sulfide scre en. These greataccomplishments are all overshadowed by Rutherfords famous Gold Foil experimentwhich revolutionized the atomic model.This experiment was Rutherfords most nonable achievement. It not onlydisproved Thomsons atomic model but also paved the way for such discoveries asthe atomic bomb and nuclear power. The atomic model he concluded after thefindings of his Gold Foil experiment have yet to be disproven. The followingparagraphs will explain the significance of the Gold Foil Experiment as well ashow the experiment contradicted Thomsons atomis model.     Rutherford began his experiment with the philosophy of trying "any damfool experiment" on the chance it might work.1 With this in mind he set out todisprove the current atomic model. In 1909 he and his partner, Geiger, decidedErnest Marsden, a student of the University of Manchester, was ready for a realresearch project.2 This experiments apparatus consisted of Polonium in a leadbox emitting alpha particles towards a gold foil. The foil was surrounded by aluminescent zinc sulfide screen to detect where the alpha particles went aftercontacting the gold atoms. Because of Thomsons atomic model this experimentdid not seem worthwhile for it predicted all the alpha particles would gostraight through the foil. Despite however unlikely it may have seemed for thealpha particles to bounce off the gold atoms, they did. Leaving Rutherford tosay, "It was almost as incredible as if you fired a fifteen-inch shell at apiece of tissue paper and it came back and hit you." Soon he came up with a newatomic model based on the results of this experiment. Nevertheless his findingsand the new atomic model was mainly ignored by the scientific confederacy at the