Breif_History_of_Ernest_Rutherford

Chris Sauer Due: November 8 Project on :Ernest Rutherford Section 1 Ernest Rutherford was born on August 30, 1871, in Nelson New Zealand, the fourth child in a family of seven sons and five daughters. His father James Rutherford, emigrated to New Zealand with Ernest's grandfather with the whole family in 1842. His mother was Martha Thompson. He died in Cambridge on October 19, 1937. His ashes were buried in the nave of Westminster Abbey. Section 2 At this time the education act passed, providing free compulsory education so more people could get a basic education. The New Zealand-Australia telegraph cable was also established so communication technology was expanding farther. Section 3 In 1887 Ernest, on his second attempt, won a Scholarship to Nelson College, For the next three years Ernest went to Nelson College. Played in the rugby team and on his second try won one of the scholarships available nationally to help him in the attendance of the University of New Zealand. His mathematical ability won him the one Senior Scholarship in Mathematics available in New Zealand. This allowed him to return for a further year during which he took both mathematics and physics. The physics course required an original investigation so Ernest elected to extend an undergraduate experiment in order to determine if iron was magnetic at very high frequencies of magnetising current. In this he had been inspired by Nikola Tesla's use of his high frequency Tesla coil to transmit power without wires. Ernest developed two devices; a simple mechanism for switching two electrical circuits with a time interval between them which could be adjusted to be as short as a hundred thousandth of a second, and a magnetic detector of very fast current pulses. Ernest was influenced by a Alexander Bickerton, a liberal freethinker. In 1893 Ernest obtained a Master of Arts degree with double First Class Honours, in Mathematics and Mathematical Physics and in Physical Science. At this time he boarded with a widow, Mary Newton, who, as secretary of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, was a leader in the movement which culminated in 1893 when New Zealand became the first country in the world to grant women the vote. Coincidentally it was also the first election for which Ernest was old enough to appear on the electoral roll. Section 4 I could not find much on him about work outside the scientific community. Section 5 Rutherford was the first scientist to probe into the structure of the atom. He led a team which demonstrated that an atom is mostly empty, with a small compact nucleus and electrons orbiting at a distance. He also made great strides in understanding radioactivity. Rutherford remains the only science Nobel Prize winner to have performed his most famous work after receiving the prize. Along with Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden in 1909 he carried out the Geiger–Marsden experiment, which demonstrated the nuclear nature of atoms. Rutherford was inspired to ask Geiger and Marsden in this experiment to look for alpha particles with very high deflection angles, a type not expected from any theory of matter at that time. Such deflections, though rare, were found. It was Rutherford's interpretation of this data that led him to formulate the Rutherford model of the atom in 1911 — that a very small positively charged nucleus was orbited by electrons. So with out his work we would not have an accurate model of the atom. Section 6 These discovery’s where sort of by accident the experiment itself was not to demonstrate the model of an atom but based on the results Ernest was able to show what the atom could look like. So It was mostly based on hard work with a bit of luck because the experiment just so happened to show what atom could look like if it were a different experiment it might not of shown such results. Bibliography Cambell, John. Ernest Rutherford biogarphy. 2011. nov 2011 . Ernest Rutherford -biography. 8 nov 2011. nov 2011 .