In the gold foil experiment, alpha particles were launched at the foil and bounced off the nuclei.
What is gold foil experiment?
The gold foil experiment was a famous physics experiment conducted by German physicist Hans Geiger and his assistant Ernest Marsden in 1909. The experiment was designed to investigate the nature of alpha particles. The pair placed a sheet of gold foil just a few micrometers thick in front of an alpha particle source. They then observed how the alpha particles were scattered as they passed through the gold foil. The results of the experiment were surprising, as they showed that the majority of alpha particles were not scattered at all. This led to the development of the Rutherford model of the atom, in which the atom was composed of a small, dense nucleus surrounded by empty space.
When gold foil was bombarded with alpha particles, only a very small percentage of the alpha particles were deflected. The atom's nuclear model consists of a small yet dense positively charged core surrounded by an electron cloud.
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