ERNEST RUTHERFORDBy: Taylor Johnson and Tilly Paterson

EARLY LIFE

• Born August 30, 1871 in Nelson, New Zealand

• Fourth child out of twelve children • Early education in government schools • Entered Nelson Collegiate School at 16• Proceeded to The University of New

Zealand, Wellington where he majored in Math and Science

• Then went to Trinity college to continue his degrees

• Moved to Montreal to teach Physics at McGill University

EXPERIMENTS, RESEARCH, AND INVENTIONS

• Magnetic properties of iron exposed to high frequency oscillations

• Thesis was entitled Magnetization of Iron by High Frequency Discharges

• Invented a detector for electro magnetic waves

• With R.B. Owens discovered a new noble gas, an isotope of radon, later to be known as thoron

EXPERIMENTS, RESEARCH, AND INVENTIONS

• With H.G.Mosley, used cathode rays to bombard atoms of various elements and showed that the inner structures correspond with a group of lines that characterize elements

• Discovered that nuclei of certain light elements, like nitrogen, could be disintegrated by the impact of energetic alpha partials coming from some radio active source

• Worked with radioactive bodies on

the mission of alpha rays

MAJOR ACCOMPLISHMENTS

• received the Nobel Prize in chemistry for 1908

• knighted• became a peer with a seat in

the House of Lords• buried in Westminster Abbey

ATOMIC THEORY •Most of an atom is empty

• all the mass of the atom is concentrated at the center of atom

•In the central region of atom the positively charged particles are present.

•The negatively charged particles i.e. electrons revolve around the central positive portion in different circular orbits.

•The nucleus is very small in size if compared to the size of atom.

GOLD FOIL EXPERIMENT• gold foil was bombarded with the narrow

beam of fast moving alpha particles • the particles were scattered in different

directions • almost all the alpha particles did pass

through the foil but some alpha particles were deflected off at different angles

• very few of the alpha particles even bounced backwards after hitting the gold foil

• Discovered nucleus in atom when the atoms bounced off they were hitting a positive charge the nucleus

QUIZ

How many siblings did he have?

Eleven

QUIZWho were the people he worked with?

H.G. Mosely and R.B. Owens

QUIZWhat was the experiment he did to develop his atomic theory?

Gold Foil Experiment

QUIZName something about his education.

government schools Nelson Collegiate SchoolThe University of New Zealand, Wellington where he majored in Math and ScienceTrinity college

QUIZWhat noble gas did he discover?

Thoron

REFERENCES

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1908/rutherford-bio.html

http://www.chemheritage.org/discover/online-resources/chemistry-in-history/themes/atomic-and-nuclear-structure/rutherford.aspx