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Re: True Bohr story?



Bill Larson wrote:

Someone e-mailed this to me today, do you think it's true?

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Sir Ernest Rutherford, President of the Royal Academy, and recipient of
the Nobel Prize in Physics, related the following story:


[Snipped the well-known story about finding the height of a building
using a barometer]

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The name of the student was Niels Bohr." (1885-1962) Danish Physicist;
Nobel Prize 1922; best known for proposing the first 'model' of the atom
with protons & neutrons, and various energy state of the surrounding
electrons -- the familiar icon of the small nucleus circled by three
elliptical orbits ... but more significantly, an innovator in Quantum
Theory.

The story has surely been around long enough that it isn't
inconceivable that it could have been recounted by Rutherford, but I
doubt it. In the first place, the forwarder of the story has
Rutherford's Nobel wrong--it was in Chemistry. Second, and more
important, Rutherford was in England (Manchester at the time, if
memory serves), and Bohr was a student in Denmark. I don't believe
that Bohr and Rutheerford met until Bohr came to England to work with
JJ Thompson at the Cavendish as a post-doc. Since Rutherford was in
England and Bohr in Denmark (in fact, at the time Bohr was an
undergrad, Rutherford may still have been in Canada), it doesn't seem
likely that anyone would have brought them together under the alleged
circumstances (after all, such questions would only arise in an
introductory course). And finally, from what I have read of both Bohr
and Rutherford, the story doesn't seem to be in character for either
of them. Although Rutherford was by all accounts an approachable and
likeable person, I rather don't think he would have had much time for
this kind of smart-alecky behavior, nor do I think that Bohr, who was
also likeable and approachable, would have engaged in such behavior.
He took his physics pretty seriously.

I have enjoyed the story, and even recounted it to my students, to
give them some examples of "out of the box" thinking, but I doubt if
it is true.

Hugh


Hugh Haskell
<mailto://hhaskell@mindspring.com>

Let's face it. People use a Mac because they want to, Windows because they
have to..
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