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Scattering Experiment
By: Muhammad Asif, Talha Faisal,
Ahmad Hussain, Ibrahim Rafique &
Areeb Shaikh
The Foil
A single atom is too small to look at. It would be impossible to
get just one to examine. Therefore Rutherford decided to look
at a metal foil consisting of many atoms in a very thin sheet.
Gold was the ideal choice as gold can be rolled out into very
fine gold leaf sheets. These very fine sheets are only a few
atoms deep. Therefore gold foil would produce results of
interactions that could be best related to the interaction
between a single alpha and a single nucleus
If the foil was too thick the alpha particles would just be
absorbed. Remember that he expected most of them to just
go through but he knew that they could be absorbed by
thicker foils and even by a few centimetres of air.
The Efforts
Less than 1 in 8,000 alpha particles back scattered. This
gives an indication of the tedious work involved in taking a
checking the results! They would have to be repeated
many times to be sure they were not due to anomalies!
Would you have been tempted to discount totally
inexplicable results and give your professor a set of results
he expected? Or would you, like Geiger and Marsden,
repeat and repeat and report the strange findings to
Rutherford so that a whole new model of the atom could be
developed? It is the careful (and honest!) investigation into
anomalies that often lead to new theories.
Nowadays this could be done with data logging and
computer analysis. In the early 1900s scientists had to do a
lot of painstaking measurements!
Alpha-Particle Scattering
Experiment
The Conclusion
When Rutherford mathematically investigated the results he proposed a model
that explained the results that Geiger and Marsden obtained.
The fact that the vast majority of the alpha particles got straight through led
Rutherford to propose that the atom was composed primarily of empty space.
The fact that backscattering occurred in 1 in 8000 alpha particles indicated
that there was a:
small(that was why so few were affected)
massive(meaning containing lots of mass - he knew the electrons had very little mass
and the fact that all of the positive charges were concentrated into a small area meant
that the mass was concentrated there too)
positively charged(because it repelled the alpha particles) nucleus in the centre of the
atom (neutrons had not been discovered at that time - so he made no mention of them!).
'sun'.