AQA Physics Spec B AS

Models of the Atom

The word atom (from atomos meaning indivisible) was used by the Greek
philosopher Democritus in 400BC. He suggested that matter was made of different
types of discrete types of matter and that these particles determined the properties of
matter.

The law of constant composition (Proust) and the law of constant proportions
(Dalton) in the 17
th
century supported Democrituss claims.

They suggest that the ratio of masses of an element in a compound remain the same
however much there is, and when two elements combine the mass of one element
combines with a fixed mass of another in a simple ratio respectively. For example

A mass of 11g of sodium is to react with hydrogen, carbon and oxygen to form
sodium hydrogen carbonate. Calculate the mass of the other three reagents that
would be required for this to occur.

mol mol g 48 . 0
23
11
11

Sodium hydrogen carbonate formulae is
3
NaHCO
Therefore 0.48mol of H, C and 48 . 0 3 mol of O

g O
g C
g H
MM mol mass
04 . 23 3 ) 16 48 . 0 ( :
76 . 5 12 48 . 0 :
48 . 0 1 48 . 0 :







Brownian motion further strengthened the atomic theory. Robert Brown, a Biologist,
noticed the random movement of pollen suspended in a liquid. The same effect is
noticed with smoke particles in air when viewed under a microscope. The conclusion
was that air particles bombard the smoke atom resulting in their jerky movement.

Size of the Atom
The approximate width of an atom is about m
10
10

,
whereas the width of a nucleus is about m
14
10

AQA Physics Spec B AS

Discovery of the Electron - J.J Thomson
J.J. Thomson became the third Cavendish
Professor of Experimental Physics in 1884. One
of the phenomena he studied was the conduction
of electricity through gases.

One subject which interested Thomson was cathode rays. These rays are emitted at
the cathode, or negative terminal, in a discharge tube. In 1879 Crookes had
proposed that the cathode rays were 'radiant matter', negatively charged particles
that were repelled from the negatively charged cathode and attracted to the positively
charged anode.

In his experiment, J.J. Thomson had found a charged particle that had a specific
charge two thousand times greater than that of the hydrogen ion, the lightest particle
known in 1897. Once the charge on the particles was measured he could say with
certainty that they were two thousand times lighter than hydrogen. This particle he
had discovered was the electron.


Discovery of the Neutron - Chadwick
By 1910 the atom was thought to consist of a massive nucleus orbited by electrons,
but measurements of atomic mass indicated that all nuclei must contain integer
numbers of some other particle. What were these particles inside the nucleus?

One of these particles was the proton. The proton was discovered during
investigations of positive rays, and can be produced by ionising hydrogen. Hydrogen
is the lightest type of atom, consisting of a single proton and a single electron.
Ionisation separates the electron from the atom, so only the proton remains.

If more massive nuclei contained only protons their charge would be much higher
than measurements suggested. With the exception of hydrogen all atoms have a
higher mass number than charge number. Rutherford thought that the nucleus
consisted of protons and 'neutral doublets' formed from closely bound protons and
electrons. This could explain both the mass and the charge that had been measured
for different nuclei.

Chadwick worked day and night to prove the neutron theory, studying the beryllium
radiation with an ionisation counter and a cloud chamber. He found that the wax
could be replaced with other light substances, even beryllium, and that protons were
still produced.

AQA Physics Spec B AS

Chadwicks apparatus consisted of the neutron chamber, in which (first believed to
be protons) are produced, and the ionisation chamber which detects protons







Rutherford model of the Atom
By the mid 1930s, the understanding of the fundamental structure of matter seemed
almost complete. Decades before, Rutherford had shown by scattering alpha
particles from a gold foil that atoms have relatively tiny but massive nuclei. In
Rutherford's experiment, (first performed by Geiger and Marsden) a radioactive
source shot a stream of alpha particles at a sheet of very thin gold foil, which stood in
front of a screen. The alpha particles would make little flashes of light where they hit
the screen. The alpha particles were expected to pass right through the very thin
gold foil and make their marks in a small cluster on the screen. But much to
everyone's surprise, some of the alpha particles were deflected at large angles to the
foil; some even hit the screen in front of the foil. Since some of the positive alpha
particles were substantially deflected, Rutherford concluded that there must be
something inside an atom for the alpha particles to bounce off. He surmised that it is
small, dense, and positively charged: the nucleus.





AQA Physics Spec B AS

Bohr model
This idea was introduced because the simple Rutherford
model of the atom had one serious disadvantage
concerning the stability of the orbits. Bohr showed that in
such a model the electrons would spiral into the nucleus in
about 10
-10
s, due to electrostatic attraction. He therefore
proposed that the electrons could only exist in certain
states, equivalent to the loops on the vibrating string.


Bohr suggested that the angular momentum ) ( r p of an electron is only allowed
integer values of a constant. In other words

2
h
n r mv

Standing Waves and Atoms

By applying the de Broglie theory to electrons within atoms we
can understand a lot about the nature and behaviour of atoms
themselves. If an electron in an atom is to be represented as
a wave, it must be a standing wave similar to those produced
on a string fixed at each end. The string or electron is fixed to
either side of a box with vertical walls and so the string or
electron can vibrate in different modes. Each mode has a
whole number of loops. Therefore

n r nce circumfere 2 and substituting
mv
h
p
h

then

2
2
h
n r mv
mv
h
n r which is the Bohr condition.


Exotic Particles
To the surprise of the physicists, accelerator experiments revealed that the world of
particles was very rich; many more particle types similar to protons and neutrons
(called baryons) - and a whole new family of particles called mesons - were
discovered. By the early 1960s a hundred or so types of particles had been identified,
and physicists still had no complete understanding of the fundamental forces.

Antimatter - Dirac
In 1928, Paul Dirac developed a relativistic theory of quantum mechanics, modifying
Schrdingers original wave equation to include the effects of special relativity.
Diracs equation predicted two possible types of energy states for electrons the
expected positive states alongside unexpected negative energy states. Dirac
proposed that such a negative energy state corresponded to some kind of mirror-
particle of the electron; having the same mass but opposite charge.

The positron, as it became known, was experimentally observed in 1932 by Carl D.
Anderson. A positron is an anti-electron; it has precisely the same mass and a
AQA Physics Spec B AS

charge of +e. The particle is moving up the photograph. It
has been slowed down by passing through the lead plate
across the centre, and the curvature of the path is caused
by a magnetic field. At this stage, its enough to say that
the particle is curved more when it is slower because the
particle spends longer in the magnetic field.

Anderson could deduce, from the direction and magnitude
of the curvature and the length of the particle track, that
the particle was positive and had a mass not more than
twice that of an electron.
The positron was the first anti-particle discovered: since
then it has been found that every particle has its antiparticle.

Neutrinos Pauli

Early studies of beta decay revealed a continuous
energy spectrum up to a maximum, unlike the
predictable energy of alpha particles. Another
anomaly was the fact that the nuclear recoil was not
in the direction opposite to the momentum of the
electron. The emission of another particle was a
probable explanation of this behaviour, but searches
found no evidence of either mass or charge. Pauli in
1930 proposed a particle called a neutrino which
could carry away the missing energy and momentum. With no charge and no mass, it
was hard to detect, and not until 1953 was experimental detection of the neutrino
achieved.

The Quark Proposal
In 1964, two physicists - Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig - independently hit
upon the idea that neutrons and protons and all those new particles could be
explained by a few types of yet smaller objects; Gell-Mann called them quarks.

They could explain all the observed baryons and mesons with just three types of
quarks (now called up, down, and strange) and their antiquarks.

The revolutionary part of their idea was that they had to assign the quarks electric
charges of 2/3 and -1/3 in units of the proton charge; such charges had never been
observed.

The reason that fractional electric charges like those of quarks have not been seen is
that the quarks are never found separately, but only inside composite particles called
hadrons. There are two classes of hadrons: baryons (including neutrons and
protons) which contain three quarks, and mesons, which contain one quark and one
antiquark.

The strong colour force between quarks is carried by gluons, which like photons are
bosons. Particles which feel this force are called hadrons.

At high energies, scattering experiments create a large number of new kinds of
particle. Particles made from the first five quark types have been produced and
studied at accelerators. The top quark is so massive it took many years and very
AQA Physics Spec B AS

high-energy accelerators to produce it. The top quark was finally discovered in April
1995 at Fermilab.

The Leptons
In contrast to the quarks, any of the six leptons may be found by itself. The electron
is the best known lepton. Two other charged leptons, the muon, (discovered in 1936)
and the tau (discovered in 1975) differ from the electron only in that they are more
massive than it. The other three leptons are very elusive particles called neutrinos,
which have no electric charge and very little, if any, mass. There is one type of
neutrino corresponding to each type of electrically charged lepton. For each of the
six leptons there is an antilepton with equal mass and opposite charge.