BIOGRAPHY

Ernest Rutherford and the Birth of Modern Physics

Matthew Wright

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Every schoolkid has seen a diagram of the atom: a packed nucleus of protons and neutrons, with tiny electrons whizzing around it like planets in a minuscule solar system.

In essence, this is still how physicists see atoms today, though the models they work with are a lot more complicated, involving mysterious nuclear forces, a subatomic zoo of particles and weird quantum considerations that we didn’t have to know about in high school, and most of us never have to think about at all.

The infinitesimal solar system is indeed an oversimplification of what really goes on inside the atom, but it’s still a useful metaphor for the building blocks of matter. It’s one we’re all familiar with from corpora

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