Rutherford and the Nuclear Atom

Subject(s): Physics | Age: Post 16 | Type: Textbook | Publication Year: 1970 - 1979

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This book was one in the Longman Physics Topics series. It was written to provide background material for the work on atomic structure in the fifth year of the Nuffield Physics course.

This book set out to describe the work of the outstanding experimental physicist as he himself saw it at the time he carried it out. The text features quotations from Rutherford’s own writing (but with modern units) and is illustrated with a series of line diagrams and well as historical photographs. As a result the book is still of considerable interest, even though it was first published in 1972. The book is a challenging reader for students taking AS physics courses now.

Contents
INTRODUCING THIS BOOK

NEW ZEALAND AND CAMBRIDGE 1871-1898
• A detector for electrical waves
• The Cavendish Laboratory
• The passage of electricity in gases exposed to Rontgen rays

MONTREAL 1898-1907
• The radioactive series
• What are the alpha rays?
• The energy of a radioactive change

MANCHESTER 1907-1919
• Counting alpha particles and the charge on the alpha particle
• Final demonstration that the alpha particle is helium
• Analysis of beta and gamma rays
• The discovery of the nucleus
• The disintegration of the nucleus

CAMBRIDGE 1919-1937
• The artificial transmutation of matter
• The discovery of the neutron

RUTHERFORD - THE MAN
NOTES
APPENDIX

URL: http://stem.org.uk/rx7fb

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