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Rutherford: Rossi Tommaso

Ernest Rutherford was a pioneering physicist born in New Zealand in 1871. Through experiments bombarding atoms with alpha particles, he developed the first plausible atomic model with a small, positively charged nucleus surrounded by orbiting electrons. This contradicted prevailing theories but provided the first glimpse of atomic structure without direct observation. Rutherford made many other contributions including the discovery of alpha and beta radiation and the deliberate transmutation of elements. He was awarded the 1908 Nobel Prize in Chemistry but felt it should have been for physics.

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Jacopo Frignani
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42 views8 pages

Rutherford: Rossi Tommaso

Ernest Rutherford was a pioneering physicist born in New Zealand in 1871. Through experiments bombarding atoms with alpha particles, he developed the first plausible atomic model with a small, positively charged nucleus surrounded by orbiting electrons. This contradicted prevailing theories but provided the first glimpse of atomic structure without direct observation. Rutherford made many other contributions including the discovery of alpha and beta radiation and the deliberate transmutation of elements. He was awarded the 1908 Nobel Prize in Chemistry but felt it should have been for physics.

Uploaded by

Jacopo Frignani
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Rutherford

Rossi Tommaso
Introduction
Rutherford was a key figure in physics, and not just because his dicoveries. 
He gave way to atomic physics with the experiment that allowed him to
develop the first plausible atomic model, with a positive charge placed in
the center and the electrons that rotate around it.
For the first time in history, it was possible to describe a thing without
ever having seen it, but deducing its physical structure from the behavior
of particles that were fired at it.
To him we owe also a series of progress in the way of doing physics: to
perform and repeat experiments even if they contradict current theories;
immediately communicate the results to the scientific world and
understand the need to involve scientists with different specializations in
an experiment.
The childhood
Ernest Rutherford was born in 1871 in Spring Grove,
in New Zeland.
His Father is a Scottish craftsman and farmer with
little education. His mother, daughter of English
immigrants, is a teacher and wants his children to
study.
He attends public school but spends most of his free
time doing homework on the family farm.
At the age of ten he reads his first book of sciences,
which opens up a world to him.
In 1887 he won a scholarship and enrolled at Nelson
Collegiate School, a middle school where he stayed
for two years playing rugby too.
His studies
In 1889 he win another scholarship and attends the University of New
Zeland. Here one stands out in mathematics and physics. 
In 1893 he obtains the Mastrers of arts in mathematics and physics
and, the following year, in sciences. Here he begins the first
experiments on the magnetic properties of iron, creating a detector of
electromagnetic waves.
In 1984 he became engaged to Mary Newton who he will marry in
1900.
 In 1895 he went on a scholarship to go to Cambridge, where he
begins to study the ionization of gases generated by X-rays.
The radioactivity

   In 1898, studying the radioactive


phenomena discovered by becquerel
and perfected by the Curie, he
discovered that uranium and other
radioactive substances emit two types
of rays, which he calls alpha and
beta.
   In the same year he moved to Canada
and in 1900, in Montreal, he
demonstrated that radioactivity is an
atomic phenomenon and elaborates
the theory of transmutation of atoms.
The Nobel Prize 

In 1908 rutherford was awarded the


Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his
studies on the disintegration of the
elements and on the chemistry of
radioactive substances. 
The award flatters him, but he feels like
a physicist and would have preferred
the nobel for Physics.
Rutherford's atom

•In 1909 Geiger and Marsden


realize that by bombarding with
thin alpha particles of gold,
some particles come back. He
meditates on the experiment
and elaborates a planetary
model of the atom.
• Atoms are made up of a small
nucleus with a positive charge,
around which very slight
negatively charged electrons
rotate.
The trasmutation and his last years

During the First World War he engaged in military research, trying to


create effective systems for detecting submarines.
 Once the war is over, he returns to Cambridge and, having returned
to studies on radioactivity, shows that there is not only natural
radioactivity. Radioactive decay processes can also be caused
artificially by bombarding nuclei with alpha particles. Rutherford was
the first to deliberately trasmute a chemical element.
In the last years of his life he engages in the leadership of his group
of students, some of whom will win the Nobel Prize. 
He died in Cambridge in 1937.

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