Elastic scattering of charged particles by the Coulomb force
Main article: Rutherford scattering experiments
Figure 1. In a cloud chamber, a 5.3 MeV alpha particle track from a lead-210 pin source near point 1 undergoes Rutherford scattering near point 2, deflecting by an angle of about 30°. It scatters once again near point 3, and finally comes to rest in the gas. The target nucleus in the chamber gas could have been a nitrogen, oxygen, carbon, or hydrogen nucleus. It received enough kinetic energy in the elastic collision to cause a short visible recoiling track near point 2. (The scale is in centimeters.)
In particle physics, Rutherford scattering is the elastic scattering of charged particles by the Coulomb interaction. It is a physical phenomenon explained by Ernest Rutherford in 1911[1] that led to the development of the planetary Rutherford model of the atom and eventually the Bohr model. Rutherford scattering was first referred to as Coulomb scattering because it relies only upon the static electric (Coulomb) potential, and the minimum distance between particles is set entirely by this potential. The classical Rutherford scattering process of alpha particles against gold nuclei is an example of "elastic scattering" because neither the alpha particles nor the gold nuclei are internally excited. The Rutherford formula (see below) further neglects the recoil kinetic energy of the massive target nucleus.
The initial discovery was made by Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden in 1909 when they performed the gold foil experiment in collaboration with Rutherford, in which they fired a beam of alpha particles (helium nuclei) at foils of gold leaf.[2] At the time of the experiment, the atom was thought to be analogous to a plum pudding (as proposed by J. J. Thomson), with the negatively-charged electrons (the plums) studded throughout a positive spherical matrix (the pudding). If the plum-pudding model were correct, the positive "pudding", being more spread out than in the correct model of a concentrated nucleus, would not be able to exert such large coulombic forces, and the alpha particles should only be deflected by small angles as they pass through.
However, the intriguing results showed that around 1 in 8,000 [3]: 264 alpha particles were deflected by very large angles (over 90°), while the rest passed through with little deflection. From this, Rutherford concluded that the majority of the mass was concentrated in a minute, positively-charged region (the nucleus) surrounded by electrons. When a (positive) alpha particle approached sufficiently close to the nucleus, it was repelled strongly enough to rebound at high angles. The small size of the nucleus explained the small number of alpha particles that were repelled in this way. Rutherford showed, using the method outlined below, that the size of the nucleus was less than about 10−14 m (how much less than this size, Rutherford could not tell from this experiment alone; see more below on this problem of lowest possible size). As a visual example, Figure 1 shows the deflection of an alpha particle by a nucleus in the gas of a cloud chamber.
Rutherford scattering is now exploited by the materials science community in an analytical technique called Rutherford backscattering.
^Rutherford, E. (1911). "LXXIX. The scattering of α and β particles by matter and the structure of the atom" (PDF). The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science. 21 (125): 669–688. doi:10.1080/14786440508637080. ISSN 1941-5982.
^Geiger, H.; Marsden, E. (1909). "On a Diffuse Reflection of the α-Particles". Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences. 82 (557): 495–500. Bibcode:1909RSPSA..82..495G. doi:10.1098/rspa.1909.0054. Archived from the original on January 2, 2008.
^Heilbron, John L. (1968). "The Scattering of α and β Particles and Rutherford's Atom". Archive for History of Exact Sciences. 4 (4): 247–307. ISSN 0003-9519.
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