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Rutherford performed a famous experiment where he fired alpha particles at very thin gold foil.The experiment was set up with detectors both in front and behind the gold foil. Alpha particles are relatively heavy but small particles, like a helium atom without electrons.Rutherford proved in this experiment that the atom consisted mainly of space (most of the alpha particles went through the gold foil) but with extremely dense nuclei (some of the alpha particles were deflected or even bounced back they way they had come).This was a leap forward in knowledge about the structure of the atom at the time. The atom wasn't a uniform structure with particles evenly distributed in it. Rutherford proved and believed that the atom had a heavy, dense nucleus with electrons relatively far away.
The British scientist James Chadwick made an experiment that had to do with a beam and being deflected by electric or magnectic fields. Since it wasn't deflected he was able to conclude that the particles carried no electric charge; therefore making them a neutron.
Actually, it was two students of Rutherford who made this discovery. Ernest Marsden, and Hans Geiger, both of whom went on to better things later in life. For their experiments, they had to sit in a darkened room till their eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and the they fired their particles at a gold foil, their target. The diffraction was recorded on the far side when the particles hit a ZnS screen, which fluoresced briefly. It was their idea to erect the detector screen towards the near side of the target, and observed the reflected particles. It was a few weeks before Rutherford actually saw their results, and was amazed by what he saw. As to the numbers, that merely came out of the mass of data.
Rutherford's famous gold foil and proton experiment showed that very occasionally a proton fired at a nucleus came straight back at the 'gun'. He likened it to a naval shell being returned after hitting a piece of tissue paper. The fact that so few protons returned or were deflected by the tiny nucleus compared to the billions emitted by the proton 'alpha' source showed that nuclei of gold atoms were small and very widely spaced apart.
The familiar alpha particle scattering by thin gold foil experiment has given evidence for the existence of hard nucleus at the central region of the atom. The relevent interpretation was given by Rutherford.
Rutherford conducted an experiment in which Alpha particles were fired at a gold nucleus. Most of the particles passed through unaffected. However, some were deflected by a small amount whilst an even smaller number of the particles were deflected completely. This led to the conclusion that the atom has an extremely small, central, positively charged nucleus. As both the positive alpha particle and the positive nucleus repel each other by electrostatic forces. The fact that only a small amount of particles are deflected shows that the nucleus is only a tiny central part of the atom.
He concluded that most of the mass of the mass of the atom is concentrated at a single place at the centre of atom. He named this place as the nucleus.
Ernest Futher Ford
Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden, having been directed by Ernest Rutherford, fired alpha particles at an extremely thin sheet of gold foil. A screen detected where and if the atoms were deflected. Approximately 1 in 8000 atoms were deflected at angles of over 90 degrees. Rutherford used these results to claim the existence of a very small, positively-charged nucleus in an atom.
That the atom was mostly empty space
I believe they are called the Alpha particles and yes, they did pass through a sheet of gold foil.
Rutherford fired alpha particles at a sheet of atoms in order to determine the atomic structure. The alpha particle is positively charged. Those particles that bounce straight back are the ones that hit the nucleus of the atom and were repelled by the nucleus's positive charge.
Rutherford performed a famous experiment where he fired alpha particles at very thin gold foil.The experiment was set up with detectors both in front and behind the gold foil. Alpha particles are relatively heavy but small particles, like a helium atom without electrons.Rutherford proved in this experiment that the atom consisted mainly of space (most of the alpha particles went through the gold foil) but with extremely dense nuclei (some of the alpha particles were deflected or even bounced back they way they had come).This was a leap forward in knowledge about the structure of the atom at the time. The atom wasn't a uniform structure with particles evenly distributed in it. Rutherford proved and believed that the atom had a heavy, dense nucleus with electrons relatively far away.
i Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937) was responsible for a remarkable series of discoveries in the fields of radioactivity and nuclear physics, he discovered alpha and beta rays, set forth the laws of radioactive decay, and identified alpha particles as helium nuclei, he also postulated the nuclear structure of the atom. Experiments done in Rutherford's laboratory showed that when alpha particles are fired into gas atoms, a few are violently deflected, implying a dense, positively charged central region containing most of the atomic mass.
The initial discovery of "Rutherford Scattering" was made by Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden in 1909 when they performed the gold foil experiment under the direction of Rutherford, in which they fired a beam of alpha particles (helium nuclei) at layers of gold leaf only a few atoms thick. The intriguing results showed that around 1 in 8000 alpha particles were deflected by very large angles (over 90°), while the rest passed straight through with little or no deflection. From this, Rutherford concluded that the majority of the mass was concentrated in a minute, positively charged region (the nucleus) surrounded by electrons. When a (positive) alpha particle approached sufficiently close to the nucleus, it was repelled strongly enough to rebound at high angles. The small size of the nucleus explained the small number of alpha particles that were repelled in this way.
Ernest Rutherford develop the idea that the atom has nucleus by using gold foil and alpha particles. Basically He shot the poistive laser to the gold foil which contains positive and negitive, and he saw the reflection of it and it tells us that there is positive charge to reflect positive laser with is proton. J.J Thomson already discover the electron, who has negative charge. Then Rutherford figured out the nucleus is positive.
He decided upon this conclusion because when he put a thin sheet of foil and got some atomic bullets and fired them at it, most of the bullets just went straight through because there was nothing stopping them. but a few were deflected and so he decided that the bits where the bullets were deflected must hold all the mass of the Atom.