Rutherford's Gold-Foil Experiment

Also called

Rutherford · gold foil experiment · alpha particle scattering · alpha particles · nucleus discovery · fluorescent screen · zinc sulphide screen · atom is mostly empty space · positively charged nucleus · deflection of alpha particles · Thomson model · nuclear model of the atom · रदरफोर्ड · सोने की पन्नी प्रयोग · अल्फा कण · नाभिक

Topics

• Rutherford fired fast, positively charged alpha particles from a radioactive source at a very thin gold foil.
• A fluorescent screen round the foil gave a tiny flash of light wherever an alpha particle struck it.
• Most alpha particles passed straight through the foil, so most of an atom must be empty space.
• A few particles were deflected by small angles, pushed aside by a concentrated positive charge.
• About 1 in 20,000 bounced back: it had met something tiny, dense and positively charged head-on.
• Rutherford concluded that all the positive charge and nearly all the mass sit in a tiny central nucleus.
• The electrons move round the nucleus, and the nucleus is about 100,000 times smaller than the atom.
• The foil was only about 1000 atoms thick, so each alpha particle met very few nuclei on its way through.

About this model

A GLB file of about 233 KB, shown in Lably's 3D viewer and, on a phone, placed in your room with AR. Credit: Model, science and animation: Lably (built procedurally with three.js; no downloaded meshes). | CC BY 4.0. Original geometry and animation made for Lably.

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