Taylor and Manisha - Chem 11, period 3 ERNEST RUTHERFORD

PERSONAL STORY Born Aug. 30 th, 1871 in Brightwater, New Zealand Died Oct. 19 th, 1937 in Cambridge, England Studied at Havelock School, Nelson College, and then won a scholarship to Canterbury College, University of New Zealand After two years there he moved to England for postgraduate school, working in the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge ( ) In 1898 he became chair of Macdonald Professor of physics at McGill University in Montreal The work he did there earned him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1908) Moved back to Britain to become the University of Manchester’s chair of physics in 1907 He was knighted in 1914, and many of his students went on to win the Nobel Prize themselves

IDEA OF THE ATOM Rutherford suggested that all the mass of an atom was concentrated in a very tiny, dense positive structure at the atoms centre called the nucleus He also believe a neutral particle exists in the nucleus that added mass, but no charge to the atom He theorized the atoms tiny positive nucleus accounts for 99% of its mass but only about a trillionth of its volume Rutherford also mentored Niels Bohr, which helped Bohr to eventually refine Rutherford’s model even further

EXPERIMENTS/AREA OF STUDY Performed the famous Gold Foil experiment to prove the concept of a nuclear atom The alpha particles passed through the foil without changing direction, as he predicted Some particles unexpectedly deviated at large angles These findings allowed Rutherford to improve upon Thompsons atom model

MAJOR SCIENTIFIC CONTRIBUTION The Gold Foil experiment is his claim to fame in the field of chemistry This kick stared other scientists into realizing an atom is made up of many sub-atomic particles, not just a single particle His experiments showed that an atom consists of a positively charged nucleus and negatively charged electrons around it He was able to use this knowledge to produce the most accurate atom model at the time, correcting some mistakes in Thompson’s flawed bun model In 1997 the he had an element named after him (Rutherfordium)

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