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:
“Sometimes I think that idlers seem to be a special class for whom nothing can be planned, plead as one will with them—their only contribution to the human family is to warm a seat at the common table.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“The corruption of the age is produced by the individual contribution of each one of us; some contribute treachery, others injustice, irreligion, tyranny, avarice, cruelty, in accordance with their greater power; the weaker ones bring stupidity, vanity, passivity, and I am one of them.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“A modern author would have died in infancy in a ruder age.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It is not too much to say that next after the passion to learn there is no quality so indispensable to the successful prosecution of science as imagination. Find me a people whose early medicine is not mixed up with magic and incantations, and I will find you a people devoid of all scientific ability.”
—Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914)