Gold Foil Experiment - Backstage Science: Rutherford

At the time, scientists believed in the , where an atom was a blob of positive charge with electrons scattered inside like fruit in a pudding. If this were true, the heavy alpha particles should have whizzed straight through the "soft" atoms.

In 1911, Ernest Rutherford and his team (Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden) conducted the "Gold Foil" experiment, which Backstage Science describes as essentially the .

Positively charged particles emitted from a radioactive source (radium). Rutherford Gold Foil Experiment - Backstage Science

While most did pass through, Rutherford was shocked to find that:

A detector that would flash when hit by an alpha particle. The Unexpected Result At the time, scientists believed in the ,

To look inside the atom, Rutherford needed to fire something at it. He used:

Chosen because gold is incredibly malleable and can be beaten into a sheet only about 1,000 atoms thick. He used: Chosen because gold is incredibly malleable

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