Ernest Rutherford's Gold Experiment

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by Michael Nelson0 views·Updated Nov 28, 2020
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  1. In 1911, Ernest Rutherford performed his gold foil experiment, which
  2. was an attempt to prove the structure of an atom.
  3. The set up for this experiment had a radioactive substance
  4. have a beam of radioactive particles going through a sheet
  5. of gold foil in which, on the other side had
  6. a sensor that would detect when radioactive particles hit it.
  7. The experiment showed that most particles would go through the
  8. foil, but ones that didn't were bounced straight back.
  9. Which meant that the previous theory for how and Adam
  10. worked had to be false.
  11. Of course, since most of the particles were going through
  12. the atom, it couldn't be the solid putting style that
  13. we had previously known it to be.
  14. Instead, most of it had to be empty space, which
  15. is where this model came from, with a nucleus of
  16. neutrons and protons surrounded by electrons orbiting it.
  17. It was this nucleus that was bouncing back all of
  18. these particles, and for ones that they didn't bounce back.
  19. It had an effect that slightly pulled them off course.
  20. But Rutherford is known as the father of modern physics,
  21. mostly because of this this gold foil experiment that he
  22. performed. It proved what we now know to be the
  23. structure of an atom, or at least what we currently
  24. know is the structure of an atom.
  25. And the questions it brought up, like how the electrons
  26. were staying in orbit, have helped to motivate physics to
  27. keep discovering and innovating new things every day.