It was as if you fired a 15-inch shell at a sheet of tissue paper and it came back to hit you.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Rutherford describes the surprising result of the gold foil experiment where particles bounced back unexpectedly.
- In plain terms
- Particles bounced back unexpectedly, like a shell hitting tissue paper.
- What can you take from it?
- Unexpected results often reveal hidden structures.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- What does a rebound tell us about structure?
- How do we handle unexpected data?
Another view
The analogy simplifies the complex physics of scattering.
More from Ernest Rutherford
If your result needs a statistician then you should design a better experiment.
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