Rutherford Gold Foil experiment (1 janv. 1908 – 1 janv. 1909)

Description:

In 1908, Ernest Rutherford (in an experiment) fired a stream of positively charged particles at a thin sheet of gold foil 2,000 atoms thick. He found that most of the positively charged "bullets" passed through the gold atoms without changing course at all, where some bounced away from the gold sheet; this showed that the atoms in the sheet were in open space rather than "pudding" filled with positive material as was thought. This experiment concluded that atoms have small, dense, positively charged nuclei that repelled his positive bullets.