Friday, February 5, 2010

What was true in Rutherfords experiment?

I know he had his assumptions of what would be true and what not. But what was true in his experiment of the atom?What was true in Rutherfords experiment?
He didn't actually have an assumption. By all accounts he was very shocked when the helium molecule bounced back. He even said something like it was like shooting a shell at a bit of paper and it bouncing back towards you.





If by ';what was true'; you mean ';what was measured'; then:


What he measured was that an atom appears to have all the positive charge gathered in a small area. We now know this as the nucleus, Previously people had assumed the negative charges and positive charges were equally spread.





Interestingly Rutherford had little to do with the actual classical experiment we think of (thou he did develop the model after). Still it seems a bit unfair on the actual experimenters (Geiger and Marsden) that they don't often get mentioned.





What was true in Rutherfords experiment?
The atom is mostly empty space
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