I coulda sworn thoron was a beta emitter. my bad.
On Tue, Jun 4, 2013 at 7:24 PM, Joseph S. Barrera III < jbarr...@slac.stanford.edu> wrote: > Actually, Rutherford's gold foil experiment used alpha particles, > generated by Radon radioactive decay. > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/**Geiger%E2%80%93Marsden_**experiment<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geiger%E2%80%93Marsden_experiment> > > According to > http://www.epa.gov/radiation/**understand/alpha.html<http://www.epa.gov/radiation/understand/alpha.html>and > http://www.**newworldencyclopedia.org/**entry/Alpha_decay<http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Alpha_decay>alpha > particles typically have an energy around 5 MeV which works out to be > a velocity of 5% that of light. > > - Joe > > > On 6/4/2013 6:12 PM, leaking pen wrote: > > I do know that beta particles, used in the famous gold foil experiments, > are .75 c in vacuum, but often faster than c in other materials. > > > > > > On Tue, Jun 4, 2013 at 5:26 PM, Roger B <rogerbi...@hotmail.com> wrote: > > > > I confess to being an ignoramus. I confess to having only a B.A. in > psychology, a B.A. in philosophy, and an A.S. in electronics technology. I > am, however, a philosophical savant. > > > > I have a question that I have asked several times but have never > gotten an answer. By what means do conventional physicist probe and > understand the innards of the atom? What is the minimum speed of the > particles that they shoot into the atom to see what is there? Do they ever > use some version of light to understand the innards of the atom? > > > > If, as I suppose, and I could be wrong, all of the particles "shot" > into the atom are traveling close to the speed of light, then could not > there be some unknown characteristic at this speed, perhaps as yet unknown > to us, that causes things inside the atom to behave differently than from > how they would behave if the probing particle were going much slower. For > example, what if the almost light speed particle had a bow wave in front of > it as it flew through the aether? If every single particle that was used > to probe the inside of the atom were traveling at .99 the speed of light, > then this "distortion" would be the same in every experiment, and one > aspect of this limited view inside the atom we might call the "Coulomb > Barrier". > > > > Is this all possible? Or am I off base? > > > > > > Roger Bird > > Colorado > > > >
