Scribd
Upload
186 views3 pages

Rutherford Model Explained

The Rutherford model depicts an atom as mostly empty space, with a small, dense nucleus at the center composed of positively charged protons, surrounded by negatively charged electrons orbiting in fixed paths around the nucleus. This model was developed in the early 1900s by Ernest Rutherford based on his gold foil experiment, which discovered that alpha particles fired at a gold foil ricocheted off, indicating the presence of a small, dense nucleus in the center of the atom.

Uploaded by

mathers maddy
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
186 views3 pages

Rutherford Model Explained

The Rutherford model depicts an atom as mostly empty space, with a small, dense nucleus at the center composed of positively charged protons, surrounded by negatively charged electrons orbiting in fixed paths around the nucleus. This model was developed in the early 1900s by Ernest Rutherford based on his gold foil experiment, which discovered that alpha particles fired at a gold foil ricocheted off, indicating the presence of a small, dense nucleus in the center of the atom.

Uploaded by

mathers maddy
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

Definition of the Rutherford Model

In many ways, the Rutherford model of the atom is the classic model of the atom, even though
it's no longer considered an accurate representation. Rutherford's model shows that an atom is
mostly empty space, with electrons orbiting a fixed, positively charged nucleus in set, predictable
paths.

This model of an atom was developed by Ernest Rutherford, a New Zealand native working at
the University of Manchester in England in the early 1900s. Rutherford spent most of his
academic career researching aspects of radioactivity and, in 1908, won the Nobel Prize for his
discoveries related to radioactivity. It was after this that Rutherford began developing his model
of the atom.
Discovery of the Atom
The atom was first conceived of by the Greek philosopher Democritus in approximately 400
BCE. The concept was lost during the Dark Ages of Europe until 1803, when the British scientist
John Dalton speculated that everything was composed of very tiny indivisible particles called
atoms.

Dalton's simple model of an atom persisted until 1897, when another British physicist, J.J.
Thomson, discovered that atoms contained tiny negatively charged particles called electrons.
From 1897 to 1909, scientists thought that atoms were composed of electrons spread uniformly
throughout a positively charged matrix. J.J. Thomson's model was known as the plum pudding
model.
Dalton's model of the atom depicted a tiny, solid, indivisible sphere. Thomson's plum pudding
model shows electrons (the green circles) distributed in a positively charged matrix.

Development of the Rutherford Model


In 1909, Rutherford conducted his famous gold foil experiment. In the experiment, Rutherford
and his colleague Hans Geiger bombarded a piece of gold foil with positively charged alpha
particles, expecting them to travel straight through the foil. Instead, many alpha particles
ricocheted off of the foil, suggesting that there was something positive these particles were
colliding with. They named this positive force the nucleus. The Rutherford Model was created
based on this new data.

This diagram depicts the expected and the actual results of the gold foil experiment. The diagram
on the left shows particles passing through the positively charged matrix of the plum pudding
model. The diagram on the right shows particles ricocheting off of the nucleus in the center of
the

You might also like