Rutherford scattering experiments

A replica of an apparatus used by Geiger and Marsden to measure alpha particle scattering in a 1913 experiment.

The Rutherford scattering experiments were a landmark series of experiments by which scientists learned that every atom has a nucleus where all of its positive charge and most of its mass is concentrated. They deduced this after measuring how an alpha particle beam is scattered when it strikes a thin metal foil. The experiments were performed between 1906 and 1913 by Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden under the direction of Ernest Rutherford at the Physical Laboratories of the University of Manchester. The most crucial of these experiments was performed in 1909, being the one where they discovered angles of scattering greater than 90 degrees.


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