Rutherford Rollers

Welcome back from vacation! Here are pictures of the Rutherford roller activity where students rolled marbles under a board to simulate Rutherford’s gold foil experiment. An object was hidden under the board. When the marble’s rolled underneath, it could roll straight through, bounce off to the side, or bounce straight back. Students made inferences from these observations to guess the shape, size, and location of the object.

Cheers to Eric Muller at the Exploratorium for this project!

(Click on the images to see larger versions.)