![]() The deflection of alpha rays by electrical and magnetic fields demonstrated that the rays must consist of some kind of particles. Birks Gold Foil ExperimentĪfter 1905, Rutherford turned his attention to the nature of alpha radiation. Ernest Rutherford, As quoted in Rutherford at Manchester (1962) by J. ![]() “In science there is only physics all the rest is stamp collecting.” This also led Rutherford to his famous ironic remark, This phenomenon could then be used to help determine the actual age of the Earth that turned out to be much older than most scientists at the time believed. The half-life ranges from seconds to billions of years and is unique for each radioelement and thus an excellent identifying tag. Rutherford noticed that in a sample of radioactive material, it invariably took the same amount of time for half the sample to decay – its so-called “ half-life” – and created a practical application for this phenomenon using this constant rate of decay as a clock. There, he did the work that should gain him the 1908 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, demonstrating that radioactivity was the spontaneous disintegration of atoms. In 1898, Rutherford left for Canada to take up a professorship at McGill University in Montreal, which boasted one of the best-equipped laboratories in the Western Hemisphere. During the investigation of radioactivity, he coined the terms alpha, beta and gamma rays. There, he briefly held the world record for the distance over which wireless waves were detected. The same year he was awarded a Scholarship, enabling him to go to Trinity College at the University of Cambridge as a research student at the Cavendish Laboratory under J.J. in 1893 with a double major in Mathematics and Physical Science, and he continued with research work at the College for a short time, receiving his Bachelor of Science degree the following year.Įrnest Rutherford at McGill, 1905 Early Career In 1889 he was head boy, played in the rugby team and, again on his second attempt, won a scholarships at the University of New Zealand. In 1887 Ernest won, on his second attempt, the Marlborough Education Board scholarship to Nelson College. Martha Rutherford ensured that all her children were well prepared for school and all received good educations. The cannon exploded, luckily without causing injury. Perhaps it was also this book which inspired him to make a miniature cannon out of a hat peg, a marble and blasting powder. Among the many suggested experiments in it, one, on using the speed of sound to determine the distance to a firing cannon, gave him the knowledge to surprise his family by estimating the distance to a lighting flash. At age ten Ernest received his first science book. His first name was mistakenly spelled ‘Earnest’ when his birth was registered. – Ernest Rutherford Ernest Rutherford Background and EducationĮrnest Rutherford was born on August 30, 1871, as the fourth child of 12 born to James Rutherford, a farmer, and his wife Martha Thompson, originally from Hornchurch, Essex, England, who had emigrated emigrated to New Zealand. We shall have found the basis of everything - of the earth we walk on, of the air we breathe, of the sunshine, of our physical body itself, of everything in the world, however great or however small – except life.” “When we have found how the nucleus of atoms is built up we shall have found the greatest secret of all - except life. Most interestingly, Rutherford made his greatest discovery after receiving the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1908. On December 20, 1910, New Zealand born physicist Ernest Rutherford made his seminal gold foil experiment which led to first insight about the nature of the inner structure of the atom and to the postulation of Rutherford‘s concept of the “ nucleus“, his greatest contribution to physics.
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