In 1911 Rutherford carried out his gold foil experiment in which he made certain observations that led him to a new model for the atom. He took a thin sheet of gold and bombarded it with alpha particles. These rays scattered from the atom and were examined on a screen.
According to Rutherford’s experiment he derived that:
The atom has a positively charged, dense, small nucleus which holds protons and neutrons.
The extra nuclear part around the nucleus is a large empty space where electrons are revolving in circular paths called orbits at high speed.
The atom is neutral in terms of charge because its number of protons is equal to number of electrons
The size of nucleus is much smaller than size of atom
Although his discovery led to new explanations for the structure of the atom, the model had some major defects. These were better explained by Bohr’s atomic model.
