alpha particles gold foil experiment

What is the 'Gold Foil Experiment'? The Geiger-Marsden experiments explained

Physicists got their first look at the structure of the atomic nucleus.

The gold foil experiments gave physicists their first view of the structure of the atomic nucleus and the physics underlying the everyday world.

J.J. Thomson model of the atom

Gold foil experiments, rutherford model of the atom.

The real atomic model

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Bibliography.

The Geiger-Marsden experiment, also called the gold foil experiment or the α-particle scattering experiments, refers to a series of early-20th-century experiments that gave physicists their first view of the structure of the atomic nucleus and the physics underlying the everyday world. It was first proposed by Nobel Prize -winning physicist Ernest Rutherford.

As familiar as terms like electron, proton and neutron are to us now, in the early 1900s, scientists had very little concept of the fundamental particles that made up atoms .

In fact, until 1897, scientists believed that atoms had no internal structure and believed that they were an indivisible unit of matter. Even the label "atom" gives this impression, given that it's derived from the Greek word "atomos," meaning "indivisible."

But that year, University of Cambridge physicist Joseph John Thomson discovered the electron and disproved the concept of the atom being unsplittable, according to Britannica . Thomson found that metals emitted negatively charged particles when illuminated with high-frequency light.

His discovery of electrons also suggested that there were more elements to atomic structure. That's because matter is usually electrically neutral; so if atoms contain negatively charged particles, they must also contain a source of equivalent positive charge to balance out the negative charge.

By 1904, Thomson had suggested a "plum pudding model" of the atom in which an atom comprises a number of negatively charged electrons in a sphere of uniform positive charge, distributed like blueberries in a muffin.

The model had serious shortcomings, however — primarily the mysterious nature of this positively charged sphere. One scientist who was skeptical of this model of atoms was Rutherford, who won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his 1899 discovery of a form of radioactive decay via α-particles — two protons and two neutrons bound together and identical to a helium -4 nucleus, even if the researchers of the time didn't know this.

Rutherford's Nobel-winning discovery of α particles formed the basis of the gold foil experiment, which cast doubt on the plum pudding model. His experiment would probe atomic structure with high-velocity α-particles emitted by a radioactive source. He initially handed off his investigation to two of his protégés, Ernest Marsden and Hans Geiger, according to Britannica .

Rutherford reasoned that if Thomson's plum pudding model was correct, then when an α-particle hit a thin foil of gold, the particle should pass through with only the tiniest of deflections. This is because α-particles are 7,000 times more massive than the electrons that presumably made up the interior of the atom.

Here, an illustration of Rutherford's particle scattering device used in his gold foil experiment.

Marsden and Geiger conducted the experiments primarily at the Physical Laboratories of the University of Manchester in the U.K. between 1908 and 1913.

The duo used a radioactive source of α-particles facing a thin sheet of gold or platinum surrounded by fluorescent screens that glowed when struck by the deflected particles, thus allowing the scientists to measure the angle of deflection.

The research team calculated that if Thomson's model was correct, the maximum deflection should occur when the α-particle grazed an atom it encountered and thus experienced the maximum transverse electrostatic force. Even in this case, the plum pudding model predicted a maximum deflection angle of just 0.06 degrees.

Of course, an α-particle passing through an extremely thin gold foil would still encounter about 1,000 atoms, and thus its deflections would be essentially random. Even with this random scattering, the maximum angle of refraction if Thomson's model was correct would be just over half a degree. The chance of an α-particle being reflected back was just 1 in 10^1,000 (1 followed by a thousand zeroes).

Yet, when Geiger and Marsden conducted their eponymous experiment, they found that in about 2% of cases, the α-particle underwent large deflections. Even more shocking, around 1 in 10,000 α-particles were reflected directly back from the gold foil.

Rutherford explained just how extraordinary this result was, likening it to firing a 15-inch (38 centimeters) shell (projectile) at a sheet of tissue paper and having it bounce back at you, according to Britannica

Extraordinary though they were, the results of the Geiger-Marsden experiments did not immediately cause a sensation in the physics community. Initially, the data were unnoticed or even ignored, according to the book "Quantum Physics: An Introduction" by J. Manners.

The results did have a profound effect on Rutherford, however, who in 1910 set about determining a model of atomic structure that would supersede Thomson's plum pudding model, Manners wrote in his book.

The Rutherford model of the atom, put forward in 1911, proposed a nucleus, where the majority of the particle's mass was concentrated, according to Britannica . Surrounding this tiny central core were electrons, and the distance at which they orbited determined the size of the atom. The model suggested that most of the atom was empty space.

When the α-particle approaches within 10^-13 meters of the compact nucleus of Rutherford's atomic model, it experiences a repulsive force around a million times more powerful than it would experience in the plum pudding model. This explains the large-angle scatterings seen in the Geiger-Marsden experiments.

Later Geiger-Marsden experiments were also instrumental; the 1913 tests helped determine the upper limits of the size of an atomic nucleus. These experiments revealed that the angle of scattering of the α-particle was proportional to the square of the charge of the atomic nucleus, or Z, according to the book "Quantum Physics of Matter," published in 2000 and edited by Alan Durrant.

In 1920, James Chadwick used a similar experimental setup to determine the Z value for a number of metals. The British physicist went on to discover the neutron in 1932, delineating it as a separate particle from the proton, the American Physical Society said .

What did the Rutherford model get right and wrong?

Yet the Rutherford model shared a critical problem with the earlier plum pudding model of the atom: The orbiting electrons in both models should be continuously emitting electromagnetic energy, which would cause them to lose energy and eventually spiral into the nucleus. In fact, the electrons in Rutherford's model should have lasted less than 10^-5 seconds.

Another problem presented by Rutherford's model is that it doesn't account for the sizes of atoms.

Despite these failings, the Rutherford model derived from the Geiger-Marsden experiments would become the inspiration for Niels Bohr 's atomic model of hydrogen , for which he won a Nobel Prize in Physics .

Bohr united Rutherford's atomic model with the quantum theories of Max Planck to determine that electrons in an atom can only take discrete energy values, thereby explaining why they remain stable around a nucleus unless emitting or absorbing a photon, or light particle.

Thus, the work of Rutherford, Geiger (who later became famous for his invention of a radiation detector) and Marsden helped to form the foundations of both quantum mechanics and particle physics.

Rutherford's idea of firing a beam at a target was adapted to particle accelerators during the 20th century. Perhaps the ultimate example of this type of experiment is the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, which accelerates beams of particles to near light speed and slams them together.

See a modern reconstruction of the Geiger-Marsden gold foil experiment conducted by BackstageScience and explained by particle physicist Bruce Kennedy .
Find out more about the Bohr model of the atom which would eventually replace the Rutherford atomic model.
Rutherford's protege Hans Gieger would eventually become famous for the invention of a radioactive detector, the Gieger counter. SciShow explains how they work .

Thomson's Atomic Model , Lumens Chemistry for Non-Majors,.

Rutherford Model, Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/science/Rutherford-model

Alpha particle, U.S NRC, https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/glossary/alpha-particle.html

Manners. J., et al, 'Quantum Physics: An Introduction,' Open University, 2008.

Durrant, A., et al, 'Quantum Physics of Matter,' Open University, 2008

Ernest Rutherford, Britannica , https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ernest-Rutherford

Niels Bohr, The Nobel Prize, https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1922/bohr/facts/

House. J. E., 'Origins of Quantum Theory,' Fundamentals of Quantum Mechanics (Third Edition) , 2018

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Robert Lea is a science journalist in the U.K. who specializes in science, space, physics, astronomy, astrophysics, cosmology, quantum mechanics and technology. Rob's articles have been published in Physics World, New Scientist, Astronomy Magazine, All About Space and ZME Science. He also writes about science communication for Elsevier and the European Journal of Physics. Rob holds a bachelor of science degree in physics and astronomy from the U.K.’s Open University

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What is the model of the atom proposed by Ernest Rutherford?

What is the rutherford gold-foil experiment, what were the results of rutherford's experiment, what did ernest rutherford's atomic model get right and wrong, what was the impact of ernest rutherford's theory.

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Chemistry LibreTexts - Rutherford's Experiment- The Nuclear Model of the Atom

The atom , as described by Ernest Rutherford , has a tiny, massive core called the nucleus . The nucleus has a positive charge. Electrons are particles with a negative charge. Electrons orbit the nucleus. The empty space between the nucleus and the electrons takes up most of the volume of the atom.

A piece of gold foil was hit with alpha particles , which have a positive charge. Most alpha particles went right through. This showed that the gold atoms were mostly empty space. Some particles had their paths bent at large angles. A few even bounced backward. The only way this would happen was if the atom had a small, heavy region of positive charge inside it.

The previous model of the atom, the Thomson atomic model , or the “plum pudding” model, in which negatively charged electrons were like the plums in the atom’s positively charged pudding, was disproved. The Rutherford atomic model relied on classical physics. The Bohr atomic model , relying on quantum mechanics, built upon the Rutherford model to explain the orbits of electrons.

The Rutherford atomic model was correct in that the atom is mostly empty space. Most of the mass is in the nucleus, and the nucleus is positively charged. Far from the nucleus are the negatively charged electrons. But the Rutherford atomic model used classical physics and not quantum mechanics. This meant that an electron circling the nucleus would give off electromagnetic radiation . The electron would lose energy and fall into the nucleus. In the Bohr model, which used quantum theory, the electrons exist only in specific orbits and can move between these orbits.

The gold-foil experiment showed that the atom consists of a small, massive, positively charged nucleus with the negatively charged electrons being at a great distance from the centre. Niels Bohr built upon Rutherford’s model to make his own. In Bohr’s model the orbits of the electrons were explained by quantum mechanics.

Rutherford model , description of the structure of atoms proposed (1911) by the New Zealand-born physicist Ernest Rutherford . The model described the atom as a tiny, dense, positively charged core called a nucleus, in which nearly all the mass is concentrated, around which the light, negative constituents , called electrons , circulate at some distance, much like planets revolving around the Sun .

The nucleus was postulated as small and dense to account for the scattering of alpha particles from thin gold foil, as observed in a series of experiments performed by undergraduate Ernest Marsden under the direction of Rutherford and German physicist Hans Geiger in 1909. A radioactive source emitting alpha particles (i.e., positively charged particles, identical to the helium atom nucleus and 7,000 times more massive than electrons) was enclosed within a protective lead shield. The radiation was focused into a narrow beam after passing through a slit in a lead screen. A thin section of gold foil was placed in front of the slit, and a screen coated with zinc sulfide to render it fluorescent served as a counter to detect alpha particles. As each alpha particle struck the fluorescent screen , it produced a burst of light called a scintillation, which was visible through a viewing microscope attached to the back of the screen. The screen itself was movable, allowing Rutherford and his associates to determine whether or not any alpha particles were being deflected by the gold foil.

atom. Orange and green illustration of protons and neutrons creating the nucleus of an atom.

Most alpha particles passed straight through the gold foil, which implied that atoms are mostly composed of open space. Some alpha particles were deflected slightly, suggesting interactions with other positively charged particles within the atom. Still other alpha particles were scattered at large angles, while a very few even bounced back toward the source. (Rutherford famously said later, “It was almost as incredible as if you fired a 15-inch shell at a piece of tissue paper and it came back and hit you.”) Only a positively charged and relatively heavy target particle, such as the proposed nucleus, could account for such strong repulsion. The negative electrons that balanced electrically the positive nuclear charge were regarded as traveling in circular orbits about the nucleus. The electrostatic force of attraction between electrons and nucleus was likened to the gravitational force of attraction between the revolving planets and the Sun. Most of this planetary atom was open space and offered no resistance to the passage of the alpha particles.

The Rutherford model supplanted the “plum-pudding” atomic model of English physicist Sir J.J. Thomson , in which the electrons were embedded in a positively charged atom like plums in a pudding. Based wholly on classical physics , the Rutherford model itself was superseded in a few years by the Bohr atomic model , which incorporated some early quantum theory . See also atomic model .

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Chemistry archive

Course: chemistry archive > unit 1.

The history of atomic chemistry
Dalton's atomic theory
Discovery of the electron and nucleus

Rutherford’s gold foil experiment

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Video transcript

Models of the atom - AQA Rutherford and the nucleus

The idea of the atom as the building block of matter has developed over time. What was thought of as a single particle about 1 × 10‾¹⁰ m across is now known to be a collection of smaller particles.

Part of Physics (Single Science) Atomic structure

Rutherford and the nucleus

In 1905, Ernest Rutherford did an experiment to test the plum pudding model. His two students, Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden, directed a beam of alpha particles close alpha particle Subatomic particle comprising two protons and two neutrons (the same as a helium nucleus). at a very thin gold leaf suspended in a vacuum close vacuum A volume that contains no matter. .

The vacuum is important because any deflection of the alpha particles would only be because of collisions with the gold foil and not due to deflections off anything else.

Gold was used because it was the only metal that could be rolled out to be very, very thin without cracking.

Alpha radiation beamed to a thin piece of gold foil which is in a scintillation screen.

It was thought that the alpha particles could pass straight through the thin foil, or possibly puncture it. If the plum pudding model had been correct then all of the fast, highly charged alpha particles would have whizzed straight through undeflected. The scientists were very surprised when other things happened:

most of the alpha particles did pass straight through the foil
a small number of alpha particles were deflected by large angles (> 4°) as they passed through the foil
a very small number of alpha particles came straight back off the foil

Rutherford considered these observations and he concluded:

the fact that most alpha particles went straight through the foil is evidence for the atom being mostly empty space
a small number of alpha particles being deflected at large angles suggested that there is a concentration of positive charge in the atom - like charges repel, so the positive alpha particles were being repelled by positive charges
the very small number of alpha particles coming straight back suggested that the positive charge and mass are concentrated in a tiny volume in the atom (the nucleus) - the tiny number doing this means the chance of being on that exact collision course was very small, and so the 'target' being aimed at had to be equally tiny

Alpha raditaion beamed through gold nuclei, with most passing through unaffected, some deflected at small angle and very few rays being almost reflected back.

Rutherford had discovered the nuclear atom, a small, positively-charged nucleus close nucleus The central part of an atom. It contains protons and neutrons, and has most of the mass of the atom. The plural of nucleus is nuclei. surrounded by empty space and then a layer of electrons to form the outside of the atom.

The discovery of the make-up of the nucleus (protons and neutrons) came much later, and was not made by Rutherford. The nucleus was calculated to be about 1/10,000th the size of the atom.