How Rutherford Proved That Atoms Are Mostly Empty Space
1 min read
Summary
The Action Lab on YouTube recently replicated the Rutherford gold-foil experiment to investigate atomic structure, shooting alpha particles at a piece of gold foil to observe how they were deflected.
Commenters on the video criticised the host for getting the scale of atoms in the gold foil wrong by several orders of magnitude.
Another comment points out the error, noting that the correct scale would still mean that most of the alpha particles would pass straight through, in keeping with Rutherford’s model of mostly empty space around the nucleus, and argues that the presenter should have a more intuitive feel for these basic facts as a holder of a chemistry degree.
The video demonstrates the classic experiment well, however, it is remarked that the presenter’s lack of familiarity with the basic scale of atoms in a BeO bead (estimated to be around ten to the 16th atom) does somewhat undermine his credibility.
