Rutherford's and Niel's atomic model

Ernest Rutherford’s model

If you’ve read my hub about John Dalton, you should know how John Dalton proposed the earliest modern idea of an atomic model. Then, Ernest Rutherford and his research team came with another model. The team was conducting research regarding the Thomson’s model of an atom which is another model of atom. J.J Thomson found out that atom looks like a plum pudding and the atom was visualized as a positively charged sponge-like substance with negatively charged electron scattered inside it.

Now, comes the part where some thinking is involved. So, as the team conducted the research by firing alpha particles at a piece of gold foil thus they concluded that if the Thomson’s is correct then the fired alpha particle should either pass through or get stuck in the positively charged ‘sponge’. They found out that most of the alpha particles pass through but a miniscule of the particles repelled thus bounced back. Since there are many undeflected particle, the team concluded that the atom consists of empty space. Then, where did the deflection comes from? The deflection occurs when the positively charged alpha particles made contact with a positively charged nucleus.

Bohr’s model

Another model was proposed by a Danish physicist, Niels Bohr, who pictured the hydrogen atom as a small solar system. Why is that? Simply because, he pictured an atom as having a proton which are surrounded by an electron which moves in an orbit thus making it look similar to how a planet is surrounded by a moon. The negatively charged electron doesn’t moves away from the proton because the electron is attracted to the positively charged proton.

Another sub-atomic particle is a neutron. First, what is sub-atomic? Sub-atomic is the parts of an atom. Proton and electron are two sub-atomic particles. There’s one more which is neutron. These neutron are not electrically charged. There is a reason why neutron is not charged and that is to ensure that the nuclei (protons) are stable. Without the peaceful neutron, the positively charged proton in the nucleus would repel against each other thus the nucleus will fall apart.