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The Rutherford paper suggested that the central charge of an atom might be "proportional" to its atomic mass in hydrogen mass units u (roughly 1/2 of it, in Rutherford's model). For gold, this mass number is 197 (not then known to great accuracy) and was therefore modelled by Rutherford to be possibly 196 u.
The prevailing model of atomic structure before Rutherford's experiments was devised by J. J. Thomson. [1]: 123 Thomson had discovered the electron through his work on cathode rays [2] and proposed that they existed within atoms, and an electric current is electrons hopping from one atom to an adjacent one in a series.
Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson (30 August 1871 – 19 October 1937) was a New Zealand physicist who was a pioneering researcher in both atomic and nuclear physics. He has been described as "the father of nuclear physics", [ 7 ] and "the greatest experimentalist since Michael Faraday ". [ 8 ]
The atomic nucleus is the small, dense region consisting of protons and neutrons at the center of an atom, discovered in 1911 by Ernest Rutherford based on the 1909 Geiger–Marsden gold foil experiment.
Rutherford's model, being supported primarily by scattering data unfamiliar to many scientists, did not catch on until Niels Bohr joined Rutherford's lab and developed a new model for the electrons. [56]: 304 Rutherford model predicted that the scattering of alpha particles would be proportional to the square of the atomic charge.
A schematic of the nucleus of an atom indicating β − radiation, the emission of a fast electron from the nucleus (the accompanying antineutrino is omitted). In the Rutherford model for the nucleus, a red sphere was a proton with positive charge, and a blue sphere was a proton tightly bound to an electron, with no net charge.
Eventually, in 1932 at Cambridge University, a fully artificial nuclear reaction and nuclear transmutation was achieved by Rutherford's colleagues John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton, who used artificially accelerated protons against lithium-7, to split the nucleus into two alpha particles.
1909 Ernest Rutherford and Thomas Royds demonstrate that alpha particles are doubly ionized helium atoms; 1909 Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden discover large angle deflections of alpha particles by thin metal foils; 1911 Ernest Rutherford explains the Geiger–Marsden experiment by invoking a nuclear atom model and derives the Rutherford cross ...