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How did Rutherford's discover the size of radius of nucleus?

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Solution

Rutherfordworked out the closest an alpha particle gets to the centre of the nucleus before coming back.The nucleus can’t be bigger than this distance.In the experiment,the alpha particle gets close to the edge of the nucleus without hitting it. The ‘actual’ size will always be smaller than this. When the alpha particle is a long way from the nucleus it is having a certain kinetic energy. When the alpha particle is as close to the nucleus that it's stopped so all its kinetic energy has been stored in the electric field between the alpha and the nucleus. After solving the equation for electric potential energy of alpha particle he got an answer of around 10-14 metres for the radius of a typical nucleus.From further calculation it was found that atoms have a positively-charged nucleus (with an exact atomic number of charges) in the center which has radius of about 1.2×10−15×[Atomic Mass Number]1/3 meters.


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