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Ernest Rutherford Discoveries

Numerous scientists have made significant contributions to the filed of physics throughout the centuries. Ernest Rutherford, an experimental physicist and Nobel Prize recipient from New Zealand, was one of those prolific contributors. He made many discoveries that changed the way we look at concepts, such as radiation and nuclear power, and he developed much of the terminology used today.

  1. Background

    • Ernest Rutherford was born in 1871 in New Zealand to parents who ran a successful farm in Nelson, a small village. Early on, he helped his parents with farming duties with his 11 siblings, but eventually he won a college scholarship, obtained a degree in science and eventually studied at Cambridge University in England. There he met other important contributors to physics, such as J.J. Thompson, who discovered the electron, and also began his devotion to studying and testing various atomic concepts.

    1901

    • In 1901, Rutherford, accompanied by fellow physicist Frederick Soddy, proved that atoms of a particular radioactive element could instantaneously change into another element. He tested this theory by forcefully ejecting a piece of atom into the atmosphere at a high speed. Up until he proved this theory, most scientists believed atoms were incapable of division.

    1909

    • In 1909, Rutherford discovered that all atoms have a nucleus, a center core which other parts revolve around. He created a model similar to the solar system model, which shows how planets revolve around the sun, to demonstrate how parts of an atom orbit around its nucleus. The physics community accepted and embraced this model, especially after Niehls Bohr, a renowned Danish physicist, modified it using quantum theory.

    World War I

    • During World War I, Rutherford continued his lab studies, making discoveries regarding the positive and negative charges of an atom. Rutherford found that removing a particle of a non-radioactive atom would cause it to disintegrate. Because he realized the removed particle had a positive charge and came directly from the atom's nucleus, he called the newly discovered particle a proton. As a result of his proton findings, he became the first human to produce a nuclear reaction from a weak reaction.

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