Rutherford's First Researches In New Zealand example essay topic

Ernest Rutherford was born on August 30, 1871 in Nelson, New Zealand. Rutherford started college young at the age of sixteen he attended Nelson Collegiate School. When he was nineteen he was awarded the university scholarship and went on to the University of New Zealand where he studied mathematics and physical science. He continued with research work at the University until he received an 1851 Exhibition Science Scholarship to Trinity College as a research student under J.J. Thomson. After this hr filled The Macdonald Chair of Physics post at McGill University. Rutherford's first researches in New Zealand had to do with the magnetic properties of iron exposed to high-frequency oscillations; his thesis was Magnetization of Iron by High-Frequency Discharges.

Rutherford was one of the first to design original experiments with high-frequency, alternating currents. His second paper, Magnetic Viscosity, was published in the transactions of the New Zealand Institute and contains a description of a time-apparatus capable of measuring time intervals of a hundred-thousandth of a second. When he got to Cambridge his talents were recognized by Professor Thomson. During his first spell at the Cavendish Laboratory, he invented a detector for electromagnetic waves, an essential feature being an ingenious magnetizing coil. He worked with Thomson on the behavior of the ions observed in gases which had been treated with X-rays, and also in 1897 on the mobility of ions in relation to the strength of the electric field, and on related topics like the photoelectric effect. In 1898 he reported the existence of alpha and beta rays in uranium radiation and indicated some of their properties.

A great leader in the Cavendish Laboratory, he steered many future Nobel Prize winners towards their great achievements, including, Chadwick, Blackett, Cockcroft and Walton. His co-author in 1919 and 1930 said that "that the majority of the experiments at the Cavendish were really started by Rutherford's direct or indirect suggestion". He remained active and working to the very end of his life. Rutherford was knighted in the 1914 and visited Australia and New Zealand for a scientific meeting and for a family reunion. War was declared right before he got to Australia, after a three month visit Rutherford returned to Britain where he worked on acoustic methods of detecting submarines for the British Admiralty's Board of Invention and Research.

One of the Board's jobs was to inspect all the suggestions they received. One suggestion involved using sea lions from a local circus to see if they could be used in detecting submarines. Near the end of the war Rutherford returned to the pursuit of science playing marbles by bombarding light atoms with alpha rays, he observed outgoing protons of energy larger than the incoming alpha particles. From this observation he correctly deduced that the bombardment had converted nitrogen atoms into oxygen atoms. He then became the world's first successful alchemist and the first person to split the atom, one of his great claims to fame. Ernest Rutherford discovered the nucleus of an atom in 1910.

He did this by bombarding a thin gold foil with Alpha particles. Rutherford and his colleges expected that the particles would go through with ease however 1 out of 8000 deflected off of the nucleus of the gold atoms into another direction. Since very few of the particles were deflected it showed that the atom has large amounts of empty space. He figured that the particles were deflected back because of a very densely packed bundle of matter with a positive electric charge. He was thrilled with this discovery but he did not know where the electrons were. With out supporting evidence, he suggested that the electrons orbited around the nucleus like planets around the sun.

Rutherford's model contained a packed bundle of positively charged protons, and orbiting negatively charged electrons. Rutherford compared the size of the nucleus with the atom as a whole to a marble in the middle of a football field. Ernest Rutherford later married Mary Newton. Their only child, Eileen, married the physicist R.H. Fowler. Rutherford's chief recreations were golf and motoring. He died in Cambridge on October 19, 1937.

His ashes were buried in the nave of Westminster Abbey, just west of Sir Isaac Newton's tomb and by that of Lord Kelvin. This guy really liked scientists I guess.