Historically, there had been a long controversy about the nature of light, with one side arguing that light is a type of wave, like sound or water waves, traveling through a medium like air or the surface of water and the other side taking the position that light is composed of particles. While Rutherford and his colleagues worked on the nature of atoms, other scientists were making significant progress in understanding the nature of electromagnetic radiation, that is, light. To complete this picture leads us into the weird world of quantum mechanics. So many questions and so few answers! Clearly Rutherford’s model was missing something important and assumed something that cannot be true with regard to forces within the nucleus, the orbital properties of electrons, and the attractions between electrons and protons. But, as we know, most atoms are generally quite stable. As the electron orbits the nucleus this loss of energy will lead it to spiral into the nucleus – such an atom would not be stable. Maxwell – see below) a charged object emits radiation when accelerating. If you know your physics, you will recognize that (as established by J.C. What enables them to stay so close to each other? On the other hand, if electrons are orbiting the nucleus like planets around the Sun, why don’t they repel each other, leading to quite complex and presumably unstable orbits? Why aren’t they ejected spontaneously and why doesn’t the electrostatic attraction between the positively-charged nucleus and the negatively-charged electrons result in the negatively-charged electrons falling into the positively charged nucleus? Assuming that the electrons are moving around the nucleus, they are constantly accelerating (changing direction). For example because like charges repel and unlike charges attract, it was not at all clear why the multiple protons in the nuclei of elements heavier than hydrogen did not repel each other and cause the nuclei to fragment. KlymkowskyĮven as he articulated his planetary model of the atom, Rutherford was aware that there were serious problems with it.
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