Dalton Rutherford's Atomic Theory

Of all of the many scientists who played a major role in the formation of the atomic theory, it is believed that Dalton, Rutherford, Thompson, Bohr, and Planck are the five most influential. The research of this theory has gone on for many years and each and every one of them have brought us closer to our current understanding of the atom today. Each one of them played a special role in the development process of the atom and most importantly, they all reflected on one another. Many influential scientists follow up on one another proving their own theories correct and in time, create challenges for the next scientist to question. This truly, is one of the main reasons we have gotten so far with the atom. These amazing discoveries mostly started …show more content…
His conclusion of the atom is that it contains a positive nucleus surrounded by negative orbiting electrons. His model also stated that the atom's mass was mostly contained in the nucleus, while the rest was mostly empty space. Rutherford came to this conclusion by his famous gold foil experiment. This experiment involved firing of radioactive particles through thin, gold, metal foils and detecting them using a scintillator (screens covered with zinc sulfide). He then found that the majority of the particles passed right through the foil and only about 1 out of 8000 were deflected (Chemsoc Timeline). This experiment led him to the theory that most of the atom was made up of empty space. Rutherford's model of the nuclear atom proved Thompson's model wrong by stating that an atom consists of an electrically charged nucleus surrounded by alpha particles called electrons. He then went even further and sought out a well thought out explanation proving his scattering of the electrons. This is called Rutherford's Scattering Formula (Microscopic World Part 2). Rutherford assumed that the positive energy concentrated in the nucleus and the alpha particles (electrons) are scattered with a repulsive Coulomb force. Basically, if the incident line is close to the nucleus, the trajectory of the electrons would be widely curved and would scatter. Rutherford's …show more content…
John Dalton is the number one because he paved the ay for further research. He used all the knowledge he had and created the basic fundamentals of the atom. Even though Democritus was the first to question the atom, Dalton was the first to experiment and take matters into his own hands. I believe the second most influential would be Neils Bohr because he used quantum physics to explain Rutherford's model. So in that sense I believe Ernest Rutherford is number three. They both were an extremely important part of the atomic model because they both proved J.J. Thompson's model completely wrong. Rutherford proved that an atom contains a nucleus and protons and electrons, while Bohr proved his model by using quantum physics. Then number four is James Chadwick because he proved that atoms contain neutrons by using his radiation experiments. This was an important discovery in a sense that he proved to Bohr and Rutherford that an atom does not only include protons and electrons. J. J. Thompson is number five in my book because although he was very important, his model was extremely off and he did not have as much evidence to back up his theory. So once again, all five of these famous scientists affected one another creating a powerful chain reaction of experimentation to create the powerful Atomic Theory. I do believe that there is more to come of this. With all of these