Thursday 21 June 2012

How Ernie Rough discovered the structure of the atom.

During an A level physics mock test, the following was asked.

"Describe how Rutherford discovered the structure of the atom".

This was my answer.


Early 20th century celebrity scientist Ernest Rutherford, or Ernie Rough as his friends called him, wasn't happy with the plum pudding model of atoms that existed at the time. 
So Roughnuts, in a move that was completely ground breaking, decided to fire some alpha particles (also know as Helium nuclei) at a sheet of gold. Gold of course being his favourite colour.
What Ernie observed was that although some of the alpha particles were being deflected straight back as the plum pudding model would suggest, a lot of them passed straight through the gold and some were being deflected at strange angles.
From this the Roughernator determined that most of an atom was empty space and that all the all the important bits were packed together in the middle. And that is why the Ruffian is still considered to be a top notch scientist.


I should point out that although there is a lot of nonsense in there, the science is correct and I got the marks for it.

Monday 4 June 2012

Chavasse Park

I love living in the future. As I write this on my phone, I am sitting in a park three storeys above ground level.

I am at a jubilee concert at Liverpool 1. I don't really care about the jubilee, but I do like free outdoor live music events. And it's not as if the music is especially royalist, the last song played was the theme to Pirates of the Caribbean.

I've been aware of this park for ages but not visited. But I'm glad I that have because some of the views are amazing.

 Despite the clouds you see the weather is really nice.

Here is the stage.

And this is what the park looks like from ground level.


The music was great too, kudos to the Liverpool University wind band.