Monday, November 10, 2008

Rutherford's Model

Rutherford experimented with alpha rays or particles. When he bombarded gold foils with alpha particles, Many went without deviation, some had some deviation and some were deflected by more than 90 and came back. Hence he made a conclusion that there was a particle with a mass equivalent to alpha particle inside the atom. The mass of an atom is concentrated in this particle.

The size of this particle was also estimated by Rutherford. Its linear size is 10 fermi ( 1 fermi is equal to 1 femtometre = 10^-15 m).

Rutherford proposed that the atom contains a positively charged tiny particle called nucleus. It contains the entire mass of the atom. Outside this nucleus, at some distance, electrons move around. The positive of charge of nucleus is exactly equal to the negative charge of the electrons of the atom.

Because electrons are very very light compared to the nucleus, due to heat only electrons come out.

Movement of electrons is to brought in and the coulomb force between the nucleus and the electron is assumed to provide only centripetal force to make the electron rotate in a circular motion.

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