Question

Explain how the results of Ernest Rutherford’s gold–foil experiment showed that the atom is mostly empty space.

Answer 1

The gold foil experiment demonstrated that most of an atom is empty space with a very small positively charged nucleus in the middle. His result was that 99.995% α-particles were not deflected. This proved that atoms had an inner core that contained most of the mass of an atom and was positively charged.