talk nerdy to me

today after a fine lunch and exploration or an artist workshop area... i went out of my way to be a nerd. i went to rutherford's den. who knows who rutherford is?

i know! i know! if you knew chemistry or nuclear physics then you were good as gold - and by gold i mean his famous gold foil experiment.

rutherford was a kiwi (who knew?) and they have preserved his workspace and lecture halls from when he was a student at canterbury college. i learned a lot more about him and how important he was. so he is famous for his gold foil experiment where he shot alpha particles at a piece of gold foil and measured where they bounced to - assuming that they would pass straigh through - some of them bounced back and at all angles... i remember reading something a long time a go quoting him saying something like 'its like shooting a cannon ball at a piece of tissue paper and having it bounce back at you.' anyway it proved there was a small dense nucleus in a atom and that the rest of the atom was mostly empty space.

but he also did a bunch of work with alpha and beta radiation and was involved in the invention of smoke detectors, xrays and a whole host of radioactive stuff. i even asked for more information when i left (bc you could). i probably spent more time there than most people... but then again i am a nerd. and proud of it.