In Rutherford’s words “It was as incredible as if you fired a 15-inch shell at a piece of tissue paper and it came back and hit you.”
In Rutherford’s words “It was as incredible as if you fired a 15-inch shell at a piece of tissue paper and it came back and hit you.”
He could calculate that the only way this could happen was if all the positive charge of the atom was concentrated in a clump no more than 1/10,000 the diameter of the atom. He called this the nucleus, and started to study it.
Meanwhile, this leaves us with puzzles about the structure of the atoms. What keeps the electrons from falling in to all that positive charge? “Planetary motion” you would think, but moving electrons radiate about 1% of their energy per turn. (Maxwell)