Rutherford's Scattering Experiment 2 example essay topic

TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION 2. BODY 2.1. Biography of Ernest Rutherford 2.1.

1. Birth place 2.1. 2. Brief history of education and work 2.1. 3.

Death place 2.2. The experiment 2.2. 1. Discovery of radiations in elements 2.2. 2. Rutherford's scattering experiment 2.2.

3. Discovery of radioisotopes 2.3. Application to real life and implication for society 2.3. 1. X-Rays 2.3. 2.

Radiation treatment of cancerous tumors 2.3. 3. Food preservation 3. CONCLUSION INTRODUCTION My ISU is on scientist Ernest Rutherford, the discoverer of the nuclear atom. I! |m going to look at his life, explain his scattering experiment and how his experiment applies to real life and its implication for society. BIOGRAPHY Ernest Rutherford was born on August 30, 1871, in Nelson, New Zealand.

His father, James Rutherford was an engineer who emigrated from Scotland at age 4 in 1842 while his mother, Martha nee Thompson was an English teacher that emigrated from England at age 13 in 1855. Rutherford was inspired by his hardworking parents to pursue an education in science. Rutherford was a gifted student, graduating at age 15 from high school with a scholarship to Nelson College. After graduating from college, he was award another scholarship to University of New Zealand and graduated with an M.A. in both Mathematic and Physical Science. By the age of 23 he received a B. Sc. and awarded a third scholarship to Cambridge University in England, as a research student under the supervision of J.J. Thomson. A year later in 1899, he secured a B. A research degree and an opportunity to become the chair of Physics at McGill University in Montreal.

While holding the chair of Physics, he started his own research on radioactivity and building on the work of Becquerel and J.J. Thomson. He left McGill in 1907, to become a professor at Cambridge University and to concentrate on his experiment. In 1908, he was awarded the noble prize on for his scattering experiment. During World War I, he assisted U.S. submarines using radars to detect the distance of enemy subs.

When he returned to Cambridge University he became director of the University and remained there until he died at age 66 in October of 1937. His ashes were buried in the nave of London's Westminster Abbey, where other great scientists, like Newton, Kelvin and JJ Thomson are buried. Rutherford's work would not have been easy without a lot of help from his parents, his university mentor and co-workers to achieve excellence in his long time research work. THE EXPERIMENT Rutherford's experiment would not have survived without the support of Becquerel and J.J. Thomson. Rutherford was fortunate to have access to their work, which helped him discover radiation rays, neutrons, isotopes and radioisotopes from his scattering experiment.

He used Becquerel's work to discover in his experiment that the penetrating rays were three different kinds. These rays are the spontaneous emission of radiation by certain radioactive substances like radium. Rutherford and his colleague determined that radioactivity is the decay of unstable elements, which transformed them into other elements and released radiation (unstable element "^3 more stable element + radiation). He classified the rays into three classes: alpha, beta and gamma (Figure #1).

In his experiment, he used the radioactive element radium and placed it in a lead block with a narrow window to project alpha rays out. From the rays, he used the high-speed alpha particle as a beam to strike the very thin gold foil with a fluorescent screen microscope fixed behind the gold foil. (Figure #2). In doing that, he noticed most of the alpha particles went straight through the foil and some of them collided with the atoms of the foil and bounced off at an angle (Figure #3). Rutherford's co-workers rotated the microscopes every few minutes to count the amount of beams on each screen. After counting the number of beams that went through and deflected, he had a ratio 1: 8000.

This meant that one deflection equals to 8000 beams going straight through. He came to the conclusion that most of the mass of an atom is concentrated in a very small positive particle called the atomic nucleus and the remainder of the atom is mostly empty space. His conclusion explained that the deflecting beams are bouncing off the nucleus of the atom and the rest of the beams are going straight through the empty space of the atom. (Figure #4). For instance, image the size of a nucleus in the atom being like an ant in a football stadium.

His conclusion made sense, in relation to J.J. Thomson's theory, which demonstrated that the atom is a positive sphere with embedded electrons. This sounded the same as Rutherford's prediction that most of the atom's mass is in the nucleus and the nucleus contains heavily neutrons, as well as protons. His discovery also explained the reason for the periodic table's ordering, that the periodic table's order is based on the mass of a proton and the number of protons (atomic number) and the proton could not account for all of the atomic mass. Further in his studies, he realized that the number of neutrons vary from atom to atom, even in atoms of the same elements, such as C 14 and called it isotopes. In addition, he noticed that some isotopes of certain elements are unstable and called it radioisotope. Radioisotope's radiation is more often than not used in experiments and aided other scientists in discoveries that made significant contributions to the scientific field of radioactivity.

APPLICATION TO REAL LIFE AND IMPLICATION FOR SOCIETY Rutherford's scattering experiment advanced science and society in numerous ways. Rutherford's successive discovery of the radioisotope led to the realization that some radioactive elements could be used in many applications in real life, and has had a great implication on society. One of the application mostly used is the X-ray; it's significantly used for the examination of cracks in pipelines and vessels. Pipe inspectors use x-rays to detect leaks of dangerous gases and liquids on sewer pipes. As well, it's used for medical diagnostician in tracing cancerous tumors.

Hospitals are dependent on x-rays in anglicizing internal human problems. Not only is radiation used in prevention and examination, its now being used in destroying living cells like bacteria and insects that cause vegetable spoilage. This is called irradiation, it's proven that it's very effective and does not make the food radioactive. It's best to avoid exposure to large amounts of radiation because it causes deformation humane genes, etc...

CONCLUSION As you can see Ernest Rutherford made significant contribution to the world. In his time, he took on many roles: a student, experimental scientist and a phenomenon leader in the field of nuclear physics. Rutherford's experiment broke many grounds, especially in his discovery of radiation of rays, neutrons, isotopes and radioactive. These help in the evolution of scientific thought.

One Page Summary Of My I.S.U. on Scientist Ernest Rutherford In my presentation, I! |m going to look at scientist Ernest Rutherford's life, while explaining his experiment and how it applies to real life and it's implication for society. Ernest Rutherford was born on August 30, 1871, in Nelson, New Zealand and died at age 66 in October of 1937 at London. He was the discoverer of nuclear atom and the first to split an atom. He made his significant discovery at the University of McGill between 1899-1907. His ground breaking experiment was called the scattering experiment. At the beginning stages of his experiment, he noticed some elements are unstable and it produces stable elements plus radiations.

These radiations showed that they go through thick materials and display their internal body on fluorescent screen. He classified these radiation in three categories: alpha, beta and gamma. He used the radioactive element radium's alpha ray by placing the radium in a lead block with a narrow window aimed directly to strike the very thin gold foil with a fluorescent screen microscope fixed behind the gold foil. He had a ratio 1: 8000, when he counted amount of rays deflected and went straight through the gold foil. In doing this experiment he perceive the deflected rays are bouncing of the nucleus of the atom and the rest of the beams are going through the empty space of the atom. He predicted that most of atom's mass is in the nucleus and it contains neutrons, as well as protons.

His predication explains very well the periodic table's ordering, that the periodic table's order is based on the mass of protons and number of protons (atomic number) and the proton could not account for all of the atomic mass. Further in his experiment he recognized the number of neutrons vary from atom to atom, even the same atoms and called it isotopes. He also, observed that the some are unstable and call it radioisotope. Radioisotope's radiation is often used in many experiments and aided other scientists in discoveries that made significant contributions to the study of radioactivity. Rutherford's successive discovery of the radioisotope led to the realization that some radioactive elements could be used for the betterment of society.

One of the applications mostly used is the X-Ray; it's significantly used for the prevention, examination and distortion of bacteria. The X-Ray is very effective detecting in cancerous tumors, internal human injuries and cracks on sewer pipes. As you can see Ernest Rutherford made significant contribution to the world. Rutherford's experiment broke many grounds, especially in his discovery of radiation of rays, neutrons, isotopes and radioisotopes.

Bibliography

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