3 ms·
Every physicist learns about Rutherford's gold foil experiment, this is why they are considered empty. https://www.khanacademy.org/science/chemistry/electronic
by frozenport 3y ago
Every physicist learns about Rutherford's gold foil experiment, this is why they are considered empty.
https://www.khanacademy.org/science/chemistry/electronic-structure-of-atoms/history-of-atomic-structure/a/discovery-of-the-electron-and-nucleus#:~:text=Rutherford's%20gold%20foil%20experiment%20showed,nuclear%20model%20of%20the%20atom https://www.khanacademy.org/science/chemistry/electronic-str....
Carl Sagan was just trying make some of these observations intelligible to children.
I can't take this article seriously if it doesn't engage with the discovery of the structure of the atom, and disregards the experiments where they shoot stuff through and it passes mostly unperturbed - because well its actually mostly empty.
- hollerith 3y agoIt turns out that Schroedinger's equation predicts the results of the gold-foil experiment, too, and is better in some ways than the old "solar system" model of the atom.
- frozenport 3y agoIf you dig really deep in the article - somewhere in the middle sounded by typical garbage like "We have yet to learn how to reconcile the dual wave-like and particle-like behaviour of matter" - the author actually indicates the issue he has with the apparently empty nature of atoms: `The association between this mass concentration and the idea that atoms are empty stems from a flawed view that mass is the property of matter that fills a space.` Whats really happening is that for certain kinds of interactions electrical forces were important, and for others nuclear forces were important. We understand the nuclear forces by proxy of mass concentrations, and reach reasonable conclusions like "the atom is mostly empty".