Home › CBSE Class 9 › chemistry › atomicstructure › Why does the Rutherford model of an atom struggl…
Why does the Rutherford model of an atom struggle to explain how electrons can orbit the nucleus indefinitely without falling in?
AElectrons are not really there
BClassical electromagnetism predicts that accelerating (orbiting) charges should radiate energy and spiral into the nucleus — but real atoms are stable. This contradiction motivated the Bohr model.
CElectrons are repelled by neutrons
DElectrons are too light to feel attraction
Answer & Solution
Correct answer: B. Classical electromagnetism predicts that accelerating (orbiting) charges should radiate energy and spiral into the nucleus — but real atoms are stable. This contradiction motivated the Bohr model.
Classical physics predicted that an orbiting (i.e. accelerating) electron should continuously radiate electromagnetic waves and rapidly spiral into the nucleus. But atoms are observed to be stable. This contradiction led Niels Bohr (1913) to propose that electrons can only orbit at specific 'quantised' energy levels, where they don't radiate — laying the foundation for quantum mechanics.
Related questions
Calcium-40 (Z=20, A=40) and Argon-40 (Z=18, A=40) are best described as:Atoms of the SAME element with DIFFERENT mass numbers are called:An atom of chlorine has atomic number Z = 17 and mass number A = 37. The number of neutronThe atomic number (Z) of an element is equal to the:The neutron was discovered by:Bohr's model of the atom fixed Rutherford's instability problem by proposing that electronRutherford's gold foil experiment concluded that most of the atom is:The Rydberg constant for hydrogen, in SI units, is