by the end of the first world war Ernest ruford had become one of the biggest names in science for two main reasons the first being his Nobel prizewinning work in which he discovered and characterized Alpha and beta radiation and the second being his famous gold foil experiment with Hans gger and Ernest maren that disproved the plump putting model of the atom and introduced a new model in which electrons orbit around a positively charged nucleus but arguably his biggest accomplishment with from after the end of the Great War after 2 years of developing a directional hydrophone
for the detection of submerged submarines he returned to radiation research in 1917 on how alpha particles scatter when interacting with Light Elements Rutherford had a secret plan though with these experiments which he privately mentioned to Neil's bore in a letter I am also trying to break up the atom by this method regard this as private ruer quickly got to work on a setup a chamber in which inside laid a slider that allowed ruer to move back and forth a source of what was known at the time as radium C known today as bismuth 214 at
one end of the chamber was a small opening with a zinc sulfide screen which would produce flashes of light known as scintillations when alpha particles from the radium C or ionized particles from the air would hit the screen Rutherford filled this chamber with different gases along with air of varying humidities and adjust the slider to try and find some sort of relationship between the amount of scintillations measured in the distance the radium C was from the zinc sulfide screen after doing this reord did in fact find something strange that would help him in his pursuit
of splitting the atom what he noticed was that scintillations of a different nature would occur when the radium C Source was placed a very long distance from the screen after examining these scintillations and running further tests he determined that the particles causing these scintillations were positively charged were deflected by magnetic fields and carried the same amount of energy as that of a hydrogen atom at this point Rutherford initially thought he had discovered a new form of radiation but a series of continued tests led him to come to a much different conclusion after determining the nature
of the Intriguing particle ruer went to work to try and find way where it was coming from since hydrogen wasn't known to have a considerable presence in the atmosphere other than possibly through water vapor he filled the chamber with only carbon dioxide and then with only oxygen but found that from only these gases present these scintillations did not occur at all this led him to rule out those gases as well as a new kind of radiation since the radium Source was then ruled out as the sole cause of these particles it started to seem like
water vapor would end up up being the answer but Rutherford was hit with a confounding result after more tests he eventually ruled out water vapor as a candidate for after comparing scintillations from humid air with scintillations from dry air the amount of scintillations was only slightly reduced meaning scintillations were still happening even with the absence of water vapor in the air after ruling out most of the main components of the atmosphere Rutherford was left with only one option for the cause of these cellation an interaction was happening between alpha particles and Atmospheric nitrogen producing an
ionized particle that seems to behave very similarly to that hydrogen atom upon seeing these results Rutherford stated in one of his papers we must conclude that the nitrogen atom disintegrated and that the hydrogen atom which is liberated formed a constituent part of the nitrogen nucleus even though Rutherford concluded that the nitrogen atoms that collided trans trans mutated even though he called it disintegrated at the time he did in fact conclude that the alpha particle survived and did not transmutate another quote from Rutherford in one of his papers States considering the enormous intensity of the forces
brought into play it is not so much a matter of surprise that the nitrogen atom should suffer disintegration as that the alpha particle itself escapes disruption into its constituents whether or not the conclusions he made from these experiments were accurate one thing was certain Rutherford had split the atom for the first time releasing hydrogen from nitrogen through a high energy collision with an alpha particle these results were published by Rutherford through a series of four papers in 1919 and one year after that he proposed that the nucleus is constructed through what he called stable alphas
and hydrogen ions and also predicted the existence of a neutral particle to account for the existence of Isotopes both of these predictions would be confirmed later by Future physicists around the same time a new invention was being put to good use the cloud chamber invented by Charles Thompson ree Wilson Rutherford used this Cloud chamber to observe tracks made by alpha particles and the Chamber would later end up being used by Patrick blackit to confirm Rutherford's proposal of the proton by showing that nitrogen was converted into an isotope of oxygen after collision with and absorption of
alpha particle while releasing a proton in the process Rutherford never won a second Nobel Prize for his discoveries after Alpha and beta radiation but the discoveries he made were arguably just as important if not more important than his first and his later work served as a vital contribution to the understanding of modern atomic theory if you enjoyed this video please consider liking and subscribing click here if you want to see more scientific progress made during during this time period thank you for watching and I will see you in the next video
