Rutherford Model - Contribution To Modern Science

Contribution To Modern Science

After Rutherford's discovery, scientists started to realize that the atom is not ultimately a single particle, but is made up of far smaller subatomic particles. Subsequent research determined the exact atomic structure which led to Rutherford’s gold foil experiment. Scientists eventually discovered that atoms have a positively-charged nucleus (with an exact atomic number of charges) in the center, with a radius of about 1.2 x 10−15 meters x 1/3. Electrons were found to be even smaller.

Later, scientists found the expected number of electrons (the same as the atomic number) in an atom by using X-rays. When an X-ray passes through an atom some of it is scattered while the rest passes through the atom. Since the X-ray loses its intensity primarily due to scattering at electrons, by noting the rate of decrease in X-ray intensity, the number of electrons contained in an atom can be accurately estimated.

Read more about this topic:  Rutherford Model

Famous quotes containing the words contribution to, contribution, modern and/or science:

    All in all, the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act. This becomes even more obvious when posterity gives its final verdict and sometimes rehabilitates forgotten artists.
    Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968)

    Parents are used to being made to feel guilty about...their contribution to the population problem, the school tax burden, and declining test scores. They expect to be blamed by teachers and psychologists, if not by police. And they will be blamed by the children themselves. It is hardy a wonder, then, that they withdraw into what used to be called “permissiveness” but is really neglect.
    C. John Sommerville (20th century)

    A building is akin to dogma; it is insolent, like dogma. Whether or no it is permanent, it claims permanence, like a dogma. People ask why we have no typical architecture of the modern world, like impressionism in painting. Surely it is obviously because we have not enough dogmas; we cannot bear to see anything in the sky that is solid and enduring, anything in the sky that does not change like the clouds of the sky.
    Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)

    After science comes sentiment.
    Herman Melville (1819–1891)