Rutherford scattering

Rutherford scattering is the elastic scattering of charged particles by the Coulomb interaction. It is a physical phenomenon explained by Ernest Rutherford in 1911 that led to the development of the planetary Rutherford model of the atom and eventually the Bohr model. It is now exploited by the materials analytical technique Rutherford backscattering. Rutherford scattering was first referred to as Coulomb scattering because it relies only upon static electric (Coulomb) forces, and the minimal distance between particles is set only by this potential. The classical Rutherford scattering of alpha particles against gold nuclei is an example of "elastic scattering" because the energy and velocity of the outgoing scattered particle is the same as that with which it began.