Rutherfords Gold Foil Experiment

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Term Paper Title	Rutherfords Gold Foil Experiment
# of Words	744
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	2.98

Rutherford's Gold Foil Experiment

Rutherford's Gold Foil Experiment

     Rutherford started his scientific career with much success in local schools
leading to a scholarship to Nelson College.  After achieving more academic
honors at Nelson College, Rutherford moved on to Cambridge University's
Cavendish laboratory.  There he was lead by his mentor J.J. Thomson convinced
him to study radiation.  By 1889 Rutherford was ready to earn a living and
sought a job.  With Thomson's recommendation McGill University in Montreal
accepted him as a professor of chemistry.  Upon performing many experiments and
finding new discoveries at McGill university, Rutherford was rewarded the nobel
prize for chemistry.  In 1907 he succeded Arthur Schuster at the University of
Manchester.  He began persuing alpha particles in 1908.  With the help of Geiger
he found the number of alpha particles emitted per second by a gram of radium.
He was also able to confirm that alpha particles cause a faint but discrete
flash when striking luminescent zinc sulfide screen.  These great
accomplishments are all overshadowed by Rutherford's famous Gold Foil experiment
which revolutionized the atomic model.
     This experiment was Rutherford's most notable achievement.  It not only
disproved Thomson's atomic model but also paved the way for such discoveries as
the atomic bomb and nuclear power.  The atomic model he concluded after the
findings of his Gold Foil experiment have yet to be disproven.  The following
paragraphs will explain the significance of the Gold Foil Experiment as well as
how the experiment contradicted Thomson's atomis model.
     Rutherford began his experiment with the philosophy of trying "any dam
fool experiment" on the chance it might work.1 With this in mind he set out to
disprove the current atomic model.  In 1909 he and his partner, Geiger, decided
Ernest Marsden, a student of the University of Manchester, was ready for a real
research project.2  This experiment's apparatus consisted of Polonium in a lead
box emitting alpha particles towards a gold foil.  The foil was surrounded by a
luminescent zinc sulfide screen to detect where the alpha particles went after
contacting the gold atoms.  Because of Thomson's atomic model this experiment
did not seem worthwhile for it predicted all the alpha particles would go
straight through the foil.  Despite however unlikely it may have seemed for the
alpha particles to bounce off the gold ...

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