Chosen because gold is incredibly malleable and can be beaten into a sheet only about 1,000 atoms thick.
While most did pass through, Rutherford was shocked to find that: Rutherford Gold Foil Experiment - Backstage Science
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. Chosen because gold is incredibly malleable and can
Positively charged particles emitted from a radioactive source (radium). scientists believed in the
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