How Ernie Rough discovered the structure of the atom.

During an A level physics mock test, the following was asked.

"Describe how Rutherford discovered the structure of the atom".

This was my answer.


Early 20th century celebrity scientist Ernest Rutherford, or Ernie Rough as his friends called him, wasn't happy with the plum pudding model of atoms that existed at the time. 
So Roughnuts, in a move that was completely ground breaking, decided to fire some alpha particles (also know as Helium nuclei) at a sheet of gold. Gold of course being his favourite colour.
What Ernie observed was that although some of the alpha particles were being deflected straight back as the plum pudding model would suggest, a lot of them passed straight through the gold and some were being deflected at strange angles.
From this the Roughernator determined that most of an atom was empty space and that all the all the important bits were packed together in the middle. And that is why the Ruffian is still considered to be a top notch scientist.


I should point out that although there is a lot of nonsense in there, the science is correct and I got the marks for it.

Wibbly Wobbly.

On Friday during a lecture we were asked to suggest ways of shortening the assembly time of any given thing.

I wrote on my notepad...
"Assemble whilst travelling near to the speed of light so that time stretches. It wont mean that you make it quicker but it will mean that the time taken will be shorter relative to everything else".

Right, now I realise I got that the wrong way round. The time taken to assemble the thing would be longer relative to everything else. So you would have make everyone else travel near to the speed of light while you assemble the thing, and I'm just not sure it's worth the effort.

My excuses for getting it wrong are

• I was really tired that morning 
• I am not an expert

I could still be wrong, I'm not sure.

Of course, to actually travel at the speed of light you would have be completely massless and that could make assembling the thing more difficult.

Maybe I'm over thinking it.

Story Telling: The Princess and the Heat treated plain carbon steels.

I have to write a formal lab report and the brief includes 'story telling'. Here we go.


Once upon a time there was a magical prince who was trapped in a scary castle which had three plain carbon steel doors.
The first door had been heated to 860ºC then allowed to cool.
The second door had also been heated to 860ºC then quenched by dropping the hot metal into water.
The Third door had been heated and quenched like the second one, then heated to 650ºC again.

The princess, who wanted to rescue him, only had one good lance that would break if it was used on a door that was too hard. So the princess, knowing that only one lance meant only one chance, went to the lab to find out which door she should try and break down.

Initially the princess used the Jominy test to determine the Vickers Hardness. The test involved making an imprint with a diamond at set distances from the quenched end then comparing the results for the different samples. From this the princess found that second and third doors had a much higher Vickers hardness.

Next the princess carried out the Charpy impact test, where the samples were hit with a big heavy pendulum and the energy absorbed was measured and from this the princess found the third door was ductile, the second door was brittle and the first door had some plastic deformation.

The princess deduced that although the second door had a harder surface than the first, it would break under smaller force.
So the princess went back to the castle, broke down the second door with her lance then saved the prince. And they lived happily ever after.