4.Main Content
Atoms and Nuclei
Introduction
For just over a hundred years, physicists have been building models of the inside of atoms. Understanding and explaining atomic and nuclear structures in terms of fundamental particles remains one of the challenges of modern physics.
Since the late 1800s, there have been ever more ingenious experiments whose results inform the developing models. Some of the experiments can be carried out in a school laboratory. They are safe, lively activities that can take students into a new world of physics – beyond the macroscopic.
There is a real sense of wonder in seeing the path of beta particles change when they pass through a magnetic field, and realising that even these invisible particles obey known laws of physics by moving according to Fleming’s left hand motor rule.
Through the experiments in this topic, students can develop their own ideas of what is inside an atom. This will give them a feel for what it is like to be a real physicist – using models of the invisible to explain observed effects.
Image courtesy of the Prentice Hall website.
Experiment collections
- Ionising the air
- Counting ions and ionisation
- Cloud chambers
- Ionising radiations and their properties
- Exponential decay and half life
- Model of the atom
- Electron beams (cathode rays)
- From electrons to electronics
- Properties of the electron
Guidance
- Managing radioactive materials in schools
- Radioactive sources: isotopes and availability
- Nature of ionising radiations
- First models of the atom
- Developing a model of the atom: radioactive atoms
- Evidence for the hollow atom
- The great scattering experiments
- Alpha particles as tools
- Exponential decay of a radioactive substance
- Light behaving like a particle
- Electrons behaving as waves
- The electron
- Putting together a scheme of work
Updated 15 Apr 2009
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