The past century has generated some creative ideas for tracking particles. Hans had been waiting in the darkened room for 45 minutes. It was a dull part of his day, but acclimating his eyes was a necessary part of his experiment—counting faint sparkles of light caused by alpha particles deflecting off a thin metal foil. The experiment was part of a series organized by Ernest Rutherford in 1908, and it led to the discovery of the atomic nucleus. Rutherford’s assistant, physicist Hans Geiger, ...
The past century has generated some creative ideas for tracking particles. Hans had been waiting in the darkened room for 45 minutes. It was a dull part of his day, but acclimating his eyes was a necessary part of his experiment—counting faint sparkles of light caused by alpha particles deflecting off a thin metal foil. The experiment was part of a series organized by Ernest Rutherford in 1908, and it led to the discovery of the atomic nucleus. Rutherford’s assistant, physicist Hans Geiger, ...
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