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Seeing the Proton
By using electrons accelerated to high energies, physicists were
able to "see" the quarks within the proton. |
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Even
though quarks cannot be isolated, physicists determined a way to see
the quarks within the nucleus. The experiment of Jerome I. Friedman,
Henry W. Kendall, and Richard E. Taylor (The
Nobel Prize in Physics 1990) was very similar to the experiment
of Ernest Rutherford (The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1908).
However, this time the targets were protons and neutrons and the beam
consisted of electrons accelerated to energies a thousand times higher
than Rutherford's beam of alpha particles. Again the angles of the
scattered particles revealed a new level of matter. Deep inside protons
and neutrons, they found physical evidence of quarks. |
