Ernest Rutherford

1. Ernest Rutherford By: Brian Kober, Albert Lyou, and Charlie Romero

2. Biography • Rutherford was born on August 30th, 1871 in New Zealand. • He attended Canterbury college getting degrees in mathematics and physics. • He later attended Cambridge university as a research student under J.J. Thomson • Later he went to England to be a physics professor at Manchester university. • Eventually he started his own experiments working with radium and alpha rays.

3. Discovery of the nucleus • Rutherford’s biggest contribution to anatomy of the atom was the discovery of the nucleus. • Ernest experimented with the structure of objects. • He fired alpha particles into pieces of gold. Studying the physics of the particles before and after contact gave him the information to prove there is a nucleus in atoms.

4. The Gold Foil Experiment • The experiment started with gold foil, he fired particles into it to study how they would react once they went through the gold • Some particles would go straight through others would reflect off at sometimes very large angles. However this did not happen often, in fact he predicted every 1 in 8000 particles were deflected. • With this he could say that most of atoms were composed of empty space but some were hitting a dense form of matter he called this the nucleus.

5. Conclusion • Clearly without the help of Ernest Rutherford we would know much less about the atom. If he hadn't created such a perfect experiment there might not have been the discovery of the nucleus at all everything would be considered to have tiny holes in them. Knowing there was something more than empty space in the atom led other scientists to believe there could be more to it.

6. Works Cited • http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1908/rutherford-bio.html • http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/meis/Rutherford.htm • http://www.rsc.org/chemsoc/timeline/pages/1911.html