Question
Explain Rutherford's nuclear model of the atom.
✓
Answer
→In Rutherford's nuclear model of the atom, the entire positive charge and most of the mass of the atom are concentrated in the nucleus with the electrons some distance away.
→The electrons would be moving in orbits about the nucleus just as the planets do around the sun.
→Rutherford's experiments suggested the size of the nucleus to be about $10^{-15} m$ to $10^{-14} m$.
→From kinetic theory, the size of an atom was known to be $10^{-10} m$, about 10,000 to 100,000 times larger than the size of the nucleus.
→Thus, most of an atom is empty space. It is easy to understand why most of $\alpha$-particles go right through a thin metal foil as the atom is relatively empty.
→However, when an $\alpha$-particles approaches the nucleus, the intense electric field there scatters it through a large angle.
→Since the electrons of the atom are very light, they do not have much effect on the $\alpha$-particles.
→The electrons would be moving in orbits about the nucleus just as the planets do around the sun.
→Rutherford's experiments suggested the size of the nucleus to be about $10^{-15} m$ to $10^{-14} m$.
→From kinetic theory, the size of an atom was known to be $10^{-10} m$, about 10,000 to 100,000 times larger than the size of the nucleus.
→Thus, most of an atom is empty space. It is easy to understand why most of $\alpha$-particles go right through a thin metal foil as the atom is relatively empty.
→However, when an $\alpha$-particles approaches the nucleus, the intense electric field there scatters it through a large angle.
→Since the electrons of the atom are very light, they do not have much effect on the $\alpha$-particles.
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