Question - Suppose you are given a chance torepeat the alpha-particle scattering experiment using a thin sheet of solidhydrogen in place of the gold foil. (Hydrogen is a solid at temperatures below14 K.) What results do you expect?
Answer -
In the alpha-particle scatteringexperiment, if a thin sheet of solid hydrogen is used in place of a gold foil,then the scattering angle would not be large enough. This is because the massof hydrogen (1.67 × 10−27 kg) isless than the mass of incident α−particles (6.64 × 10−27 kg).Thus, the mass of the scattering particle is more than the target nucleus(hydrogen). As a result, the α−particles would not bounce back if solidhydrogen is used in the α-particle scattering experiment.