Rutherford's gold foil experiment

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From: Geoff Ruth (gruth@leadershiphigh.org)
Date: Thu Aug 26 2004 - 21:36:47 PDT 

Message-Id: <p06110400bd5469f56034@[10.100.1.253]>
Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2004 21:36:47 -0700
From: Geoff Ruth <gruth@leadershiphigh.org>
Subject: Rutherford's gold foil experiment

Hello helpful pinholers,

I just found a cool web site that models Rutherford's famous gold
foil experiment:
http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/electromag/java/rutherford/
(It's a Java applet.)

While I think this web site is cool, I am also perplexed by part of
it. As you can see in the applet, the alpha particles only begin to
be repelled by the gold nuclei when the slit through which they pass
is opened to a certain amount. This seems to me to be an example of
diffraction, but why? I would guess that the alpha particles
diffracting through the lead slit would be totally independent of
whether some were deflected by the gold nuclei.

Is the Java applet wrong, or is my thinking flawed?

Thanks!
- Geoff

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