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11 grade chemistry others

What did Rutherford conclude from his gold foil experiment?

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1 Year agoGrade
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1 Year ago

Ernest Rutherford concluded from his gold foil experiment that the atom is mostly empty space, with a small, dense, positively charged nucleus at its center. This conclusion came after observing that while most alpha particles passed through the gold foil with little or no deflection, a small fraction were deflected at large angles, and a very few even bounced back toward the source. This scattering pattern indicated that the positive charge and most of the mass of the atom were concentrated in a tiny central nucleus, rather than being spread throughout the atom as suggested by the then-popular plum pudding model.