Rutherford's experience or how the structure of the atom was discovered

All of us since school have an idea of ​​how the atom works. And you know, as a result of which experiment, exactly such an atomic structure was proposed. Then now I will tell you about Rutherford's unique experience.

Ernest Rutherford and his experimental setup

E. Rutherford is a unique scientist of his kind who conducted his experiment back in 1911. However, his experimental setup was elegant and simple enough.

For the experiment, Rutherford created a cannon that emitted a strictly directed beam of alpha particles.

The installation was made from a lead box, in which a narrow slot was made. Radioactive material was placed inside this box.

Due to the fact that the housing had only one exit, the emitted particles were absorbed by the lead almost everywhere in addition to the slot, alpha particles, consisting of a pair of protons and a pair of neutrons, escaped through it.

At least a pair of lead plates with small holes were installed on the beam following, which completely excluded alpha particles deviating from the selected motion vector.

After all the screens, a thinnest plate of gold was installed perpendicular to the flow of particles, which served as a target for the ideal flow of alpha particles.

And right behind the gold target, a luminescent screen was mounted.

So, when the stream of particles passed the gold plate and hit the luminescent screen, flashes were noted. It was from them that the scientist determined how much the alpha particle left a given motion vector after colliding with gold atoms.

What was found out during the experiment

Of course, similar surveys have been carried out before. And the main essence of such experiments was the accumulation of statistical data to gain a better understanding of the structure of the atom.

By that time, it had already been established that the atom had a negative charge - electrons. But the theory was that the atom was a kind of thinnest grid with a positive charge, which was filled with negative charges - zest. Such a structure was called then - a mesh model with "raisins".

But as Rutherford noted, absolutely none of his fellow experimenters even thought to make sure in the course of the experiment whether alpha particles were also deflected at significant angles.

And all because the raisin mesh model simply did not allow for such a possibility, because there could not be such dense and heavy enough formations that could reject alpha particles.

So to speak, to remove all possible probabilities, Rutherford nevertheless decided to check the possibility of deflecting radioactive elements and specially remade the experimental scheme as follows:

Additional screens were installed with a special layer of sodium sulfide for observing flares.

What was the surprise of the scientist and his assistant, when flashes from the hit of alpha particles began to appear on the screens, some were deflected by 180 degrees.

The result obtained completely destroyed the theory associated with the grid and raisins, since according to the theory, there could not exist such objects that could literally reflect a particle.

Conclusions and conclusions

The scientist made the following conclusion that in the structure of the atom the overwhelming amount of mass is contained in exclusively dense and small center of the atom, and the remaining region of the atom was many times less dense than before was considered.

In addition, the discharge of such a dense center (nucleus) of the atom could only be positive. After all, only the repulsive force could explain the deviations of positively charged alpha particles by more than 90 degrees.

Many years later, Rutherford happily recounted the following analogy about his discovery. In one of the African countries, customs received a message that a substantial shipment of weapons for the rebels would be transferred in sacks of cotton.

And when a huge warehouse with bales of cotton was shown in front of the customs officer, he solved the search problem like this:

He began to fire at the bales and where the bullets ricocheted, it means that there were weapons in those bales.

So Ernest Rutherford, having discovered how alpha particles ricocheted from gold foil, realized that a much denser structure is hidden in the atom than previously thought.

The structure of the atom created by the scientist is well known to us. An atom consists of a superdense positively charged nucleus and light electrons with a negative charge, rotating in their orbits.

Later, theorists created a theoretical basis (Bora Atom), but all this would have been impossible without an experiment with gold foil and a radiation element.

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