Ernest Rutherford

Hi there fellow friends! I'm Ernest Rutherford. Yeah, I'm a science guy. Chemistry is my thing! I was born on August 30th in the year of 1871 and was reborn on my death day in my coffin on October 19,1937 just to come back and haunt you! SO YOU BETTER NOT CALL ME OLD! =P

In 1909, I, Hans Geiger, and Ernest Marsden carried out an experiment that was meant to test out J.J. Thomson's plum pudding model (visit J.J. Thomson's profile found in the Friend Space section to learn more about this model). We used a piece of gold foil to represent the atoms and fired a radioactive beam full of alpha particles straight at it. A screen coated with zinc sulfide was surrounding the foil to help detect the scattered alpha particles. Assuming that Thomson's plum pudding model was correct, I expected all the particles to go straight through the foil or only slightly deflect. However, when the experiment was performed, the results shocked me because there were a few deflections that shot directly back or at huge angles. I then publishes my own atomic theory that described atoms as having a really small and dense nucleus which contains a highly positive charge surrounded by orbits of negative electrons. This was known as a nuclear atom. I also thought that since most of the mass was in the nucleus, the rest of the atom was full of empty space. This experiment supported my theory of "empty space" because only about 1 in 8000 alpha particles were deflected during the experiment. So I was right! :D