The Geiger-Marsden experiment, also known as the gold foil experiment, was a series of tests made at the University of Manchester under the direction of Ernest Rutherford. His assistants Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden fired alpha particles at a very thin sheet of gold foil and counted how they were deflected. Most particles passed straight through, but a small number bounced back at large angles, which Rutherford later described as being as surprising as a shell bouncing off tissue paper. The results contradicted the plum pudding model of the atom. In 1911 Rutherford explained them by proposing that most of the atom's mass and positive charge is concentrated in a tiny central nucleus.
Before and after
- 14 November 1907Birth of Astrid Lindgren
- 15 December 1907Birth of Oscar Niemeyer
- 17 December 1907Founding of Bhutan
- from 1908 to 1946Kingdom of Bulgaria
- from 1908 to 1913Geiger–Marsden experiment
- 1908Founding of Cairo University
- 1908Identification of Takayasu's arteritis
- 9 January 1908Birth of Lev Landau
- 9 January 1908Birth of Simone de Beauvoir
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The era
This moment belongs to the Industrial era (1760 CE to 1914 CE), steam, factories and revolutions. You can also browse everything in the 20th century.