Rutherfield question?

Question

When he was using the radioactive release through the gold foil, are the particles that make up the radioactive protons or neutrons? Explain why.

Answer 1

Radioactivity is composed of neutron action.

The Rutherford question lead to the postulation of the new subatomic particle the NEUTRON.

Alpha particles are two neutrons and two protons
Beta particles are electrons
Gamma particles are neutrons

When we think about radiation this is what we are usually thinking about. The process of nuclear fission is where neutrons collide with the nucleus enough to create a new atom, by breaking up the old, larger atom, which releases a lot of energy

In Rutherford’s experiment he fired both neutrons and protons at the gold foil, although he didn’t know about the neutrons. The scattering result he got was because of the neutrons and was the first proof that they existed. Neutrons hold the atom together so that explained why atoms don’t either fly apart or rush together and cancel each other out (the electrons want to cancel out the protons, but thanks to the strong and weak nuclear forces they are not allowed to do it. The strong and weak nuclear forces are electricity in another form which is all based on the electron).

According to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleus_%28atomic_structure%29
"Around the same time that this was happening (1909) Ernest Rutherford performed a remarkable experiment in which Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden under his supervision fired alpha particles (helium nuclei) at a thin film of gold foil. The plum pudding model predicted that the alpha particles should come out of the foil with their trajectories being at most slightly bent. He was shocked to discover that a few particles were scattered through large angles, even completely backwards in some cases. The discovery, beginning with Rutherford's analysis of the data in 1911, eventually led to the Rutherford model of the atom, in which the atom has a very small, very dense nucleus consisting of heavy positively charged particles with embedded electrons in order to balance out the charge. As an example, in this model nitrogen-14 consisted of a nucleus with 14 protons and 7 electrons, and the nucleus was surrounded by 7 more orbiting electrons.

The Rutherford model worked quite well until studies of nuclear spin were carried out by Franco Rasetti at the California Institute of Technology in 1929. By 1925 it was known that protons and electrons had a spin of 1/2, and in the Rutherford model of nitrogen-14 the 14 protons and six of the electrons should have paired up to cancel each others spin, and the final electron should have left the nucleus with a spin of 1/2. Rasetti discovered, however, that nitrogen-14 has a spin of one.

In 1930 Wolfgang Pauli was unable to attend a meeting in Tübingen, and instead sent a famous letter with the classic introduction "Dear Radioactive Ladies and Gentlemen". In his letter Pauli suggested that perhaps there was a third particle in the nucleus which he named the "neutron". He suggested that it was very light (lighter than an electron), had no charge, and that it did not readily interact with matter (which is why it hadn't yet been detected). This desperate way out solved both the problem of energy conservation and the spin of nitrogen-14, the first because Pauli's "neutron" was carrying away the extra energy and the second because an extra "neutron" paired off with the electron in the nitrogen-14 nucleus giving it spin one. Pauli's "neutron" was renamed the neutrino (Italian for little neutral one) by Enrico Fermi in 1931, and after about thirty years it was finally demonstrated that a neutrino really is emitted during beta decay."

For more on this topic see my answer to this question: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070904204754AA3KHIo&r=w#QZcvW2btVDeT0MfzxbMyN19TtvrVtEQimlZd4zsO_QyRerCg4sYq

Answer 2

OK firstly the name is Ernest Rutherford. Secondly, Rutherford shot radioactive alpha particles (2 protons + 2 neutrons = 1 alpha particle) in "his" famous gold foil experiment.