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My Summer with Rutherford
by Erin Grace, 2011 SPS Intern
You might say I spent this
summer with Ernest Rutherford,
and in the process
I learned everything from
scientific modeling to how to
set a mousetrap. How did I
become so closely acquainted
with the discoverer of the
atomic nucleus? Well, I was
one of this year’s crop of
Society of Physics Students
(SPS) summer interns. Together
with my fellow intern,
Amanda Palchak, we created
the 2011 Science Outreach
Catalyst Kit (SOCK). These
kits contain materials for outreach
activities and are free to
university SPS chapters that
request them. This year’s
theme, “A Century of Revolution,”
celebrates one hundred
years since Rutherford’s discovery
of the nucleus based
on the gold foil experiment.
Initially, the prospect of
creating a lesson on Rutherford
scattering for elementary
school students was pretty
daunting. But Gary White,
our summer mentor, helped
us tease out the fundamental
ideas behind the gold foil
experiment that could be
taught to elementary through
high school students. For
example, Rutherford used an
analysis of elastic collisions
to interpret the deflection of
alpha particles at large angles.
To teach this central concept
of collisions, we created an
activity in which students roll
a ball down a Hot Wheels
track so that it collides with a
stationary ball at the bottom.
By experimenting with different
balls, students formulate
a relationship between the
6 Radiations Fall 2011
Erin Grace is in her senior year
as a physics education major
and math minor at the University
of Delaware. Originally
from Cincinnati, OH, she will
begin student teaching in the
spring of 2012. After graduating,
she plans to be a high
school physics teacher. As an
undergraduate, she has done
a lot of individual and group
tutoring in math and physics.
She loves to help students have
those “Aha!” moments where
something clicks for them.
ABOVE
The Mystery Box demonstration based on Rutherford’s gold foil
experiment from the 2011 SPS SOCK (Science Outreach Catalyst
Kit). Photos by Tracy Schwab.
For more information on the SOCK program, visit:
www.spsnational.org/programs/socks/.
For more information on the SPS Internship program, visit:
www.spsnational.org/programs/internships/.
relative masses and the directions
the balls go after the
collision. Students learn that
when a heavy object hits a
light object, both continue in
the original direction of motion,
but when a light object
hits a heavy object, the light
object bounces back while the
heavy object travels forward.
At the end of the lesson,
students apply their new
understanding of collisions
to help solve a gold robbery
mystery. When we tried the
lesson with a 3rd grade class,
I felt ecstatic to see all 30
hands waving desperately in
the air to reveal the solution
to the mystery.
I also learned about how
useful models can be in
teaching physics. For our
second activity, we created a
model of the gold foil experiment.
In this “Mystery Box”
activity, students roll marbles
down a ramp into a box.
The box has a mystery item
inside that students attempt
to identify by observing
the direction in which the
marbles exit the box. The
marbles’ directions, like the
direction of deflected alpha
particles, are evidence of
what is inside the box (i.e.
gold atoms). While the
model is not perfect, interacting
with the boxes helped the
students to understand not
just the results of the gold foil
experiment, but the thought
process behind Rutherford’s
breakthrough.
One surprising skill I
picked up this summer was
setting a mousetrap. For our
third lesson, we demonstrated
a chain reaction, like those
in nuclear reactors, with
mousetraps and ping pong
balls. We laid out a grid of
mousetraps with ping pong
balls perched on top, and
then threw in an extra ping
pong ball. Then snap… snapsnap…
SNAPSNAPSNAP-
SNAP – they all went off in
a spectacular chain reaction.
From this we created a video
to use in the classroom. See
the SPS National YouTube
channel: www.youtube.com/
user/SPSnational .
Perhaps the biggest thing
I learned this summer was the
power of collaboration. Rutherford
himself was a master of
collaboration, as he was a key
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