Ernest+Rutherford(DD)

**__Ernest Rutherford__**

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ernest_Rutherford2.jpg date of birth: August 30th 1871 date of death: October 19th 1937 country of origin: New Zealand

· was born in Nelson, New Zealand, on August 30, 1871, into a large family of twelve children · At the age of 16 Ernest went to the Nelson Collegiate School, then from there went to the University of New Zealand, Wellington, where he attended Canterbury College in 1889 · In 1893 he graduated with a B.Sc. in physics, then went on to study under JJ Thompson in Cambridge until 1897 · After working in Canada at McGill then to University of Manchester again, he ended up back at Cambridge working with Professor Thompson around 1919 · He worked there for quite some time and was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work in his famous gold foil experiment

· Rutherford had discovered that there was a nucleus in the middle of every atom · He said that this minute nucleus contains most of the mass of the atom and carries a charge · Ernest’s gold foil experiment consisted of a particle emitter shooting particles through a very thin piece of gold foil · Then on the other side and all around the experiment there was a particle detector to se where the shot particles ended up · To his surprise all the particles did not go straight threw, some particles were deflected and some were even shot straight back · From this he knew there had to be some large minute mass in the middle of an atom that carried a charge, otherwise no known as the nucleus